An overview of the development of film as an art and as an industry from silent to digital cinema. Students learn the stylistic, narrative and industrial developments of cinema through the analysis of classic films.

Credits: 4

An intensive study of film history with analysis of specific films that represent stages in the evolution of the formal aspects of cinematic expression. Film showings, lectures, seminars.

Credits: 4

A continuation of CIN 1500.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500

The techniques of filmic expression are examined through a focused, detailed analysis of cinematography, editing, lighting, mise-en-scène, and soundtrack in celebrated cinematic works from around the world. Course content is organized around the establishment or subversion of narrative, generic, and stylistic conventions through the works of one director, a particular genre, or a film movement.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Examines the history of music videos, studying their effectiveness as a sales mechanisms as well as their influence on how today’s movies, television and commercials are photographed. Students are required to shoot practice exercises throughout the semester, complete a final paper, and shoot a music video on their own for a campus band or musician. Students must have experience operating a video camera and have access to a digital editing platform or be familiar with Final Cut Pro.

Credits: 4

The goals of this course are two-fold. First, the history of silent film through the advent of sound is explored to reveal what early cinema can teach about the present and future of visual culture. Second, students use this exploration into early cinema to improve their film research skills, from data gathering to revision.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An intensive course for cinema studies majors that combines hands-on practice with close analysis. Students explore the art of montage by analyzing the film language of great directors and by shooting and editing short video projects, with an emphasis on the major principles of montage.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Research and practice in film programming practices and histories. Students research historical and contemporary case studies in film programming and exhibition while engaging in their own on-campus programming. They organize film series and screenings, gaining hands-on experience with and studying diverse perspectives on programming, distribution, curating, fundraising, advertising, engaging in audience outreach, event managing, researching, and writing.

Credits: 4

Third cinema was a movement proposed by Latin American directors in the 1960s and further developed by African directors in the 1970s. It addresses important questions about independent national cinemas, colonialism, race, and identity. This course examines the movement and its global influence, with emphasis on the cinemas of Latin America, Africa, black Britain, and American minorities.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An intensive focus on the intersection between cinema and history. Students examine the debates around cinema’s status as historical document, surveying different approaches to the relationship between cinematic formal traditions and social history. The course emphasizes the analysis of primary sources, such as reviews, posters, magazine and newspaper articles, personal correspondence, trade publications, and blogs.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Through a historical survey of documentary and ethnographic film, this course explores documentary theory, aesthetics, and ethics. Topics include early cinema, World War II propaganda, cinema verité, radical documentary, the essay film, counter-ethnographies, and contemporary mixed forms. Films by the Lumières, Flaherty, Marker, Rouch, Minh-ha, and others.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Asian cinema is often rechanneled by the socio-political and cultural situations created by colonialism, wars, revolutions, and global capitalism. This course examines Asian cinemas within the context of international film history and explores significant genres, movements, and themes from the 1920s to the present. The course investigates how the transnational cinematic flow engages with discourses on nationalism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1510 Or CIN1030

Students in this course will write, shoot and edit short documentary and/or fiction films reflecting the culture and country where the films are shot. International student teams work together on locations in USA, Haiti and Africa to produce films which will be screened at cultural events and film festivals.

Credits: 1

Working in collaboration with students from film schools in France and Africa, students engage in preproduction via video conference on film projects they will complete together during a subsequent summer study abroad session. Students also examine contemporary cinematic trends in France and Africa, with special focus on diverse geographical settings, cultural and aesthetic histories, and conditions of production and exhibition.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An intense focus on sound technology, with careful attention to the way image, dialogue, music, and sound interact in both film and video. The history of sound technology and sound theory are explored by comparing sound innovations in other fields (music, radio, television) to developments in film/video. Films include The Jazz Singer, The Conversation, Pi, and Run Lola Run.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

The history of moving images is marked by class struggle, on screen and behind the camera. Cinema, in turn, has itself both upheld and helped to reveal class relations. Students will learn key Marxist concepts related to capitalism and class, and how these concepts are activated within film history and practice.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1510

As a global internet TV network, Netflix produces and distributes fiction films, documentaries and television series in Latin America. By paying close attention to this content, students examine the quickly-evolving media landscape in Latin America, evaluating the ways in which Netflix has impacted production and distribution in the region. Students should have access to Netflix.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1510

Examines the state of television today, with special attention to new genres, narratives, technologies, audiences, and corporate practices, with special attention to the growth of cable networks, online sites, streaming serials, new modes of spectatorship, and new forms of fan culture.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

A survey of the development of broadcasting and electronic media in the United States. It emphasizes the cultural and institutional history of the medium, as well as the aesthetic of televisual genres.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1500

A survey of the history of Mexican cinema from the early 1930s to the present. Students examine popular genres like la comedia ranchera (Mexican cowboy musical), el género cabaretil (dancehall film), and el cine de luchadores (wrestling film) as well as the work of the most prominent Mexican filmmakers (e.g., Arturo Ripstein, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Nicolás Echeverría, María Novaro, Guillermo del Toro).

Credits: 4

The films covered offer an opportunity to deeply analyze the formation of national identity, migration, gender and race relations, social inequalities, the rural and urban worlds, and political events that have had an impact on the contemporary societies of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

A survey of animated filmmaking from the inception of cinema to the contemporary era.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Explores the role of cinematic representation in shaping the urban imagination. Taking both a historical and a comparative approach, students study the figuration of American, European, and non-Western cities from the silent era to the digital age. Discussions include how cinema has portrayed these metropolitan areas and their people, cultures, and public and private spaces.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An examination of improvisation in scripts, performances, and the directorial design and production process. Students study the techniques of such filmmakers as John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh, the basics of improvisation taught by Viola Spolin and others, and theories of aleatory form; participate in improvisatory scenes; and make a film using improvisational techniques.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Drawing from the rich cinematography of Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Students discuss and analyze films in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

As people migrate across the globe, their media forms move with them—sometimes following them, documenting their movement, other times traveling with them, as traces of their home cultures. Focusing on a variety of transnational media forms, this course examines how media producers treat themes of home, nation, belonging, migration, immigration, displacement, alienation, border crossing, and mobile identities.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (CIN1500 And CIN1510 ) Or MSA2200 Or NME2100

A detailed examination of a filmmaker’s career. Students analyze films in light of a filmmaker’s entire output while situating the artist’s creative process in relation to the industrial and historical context. The course also introduces students to the tradition of auteur criticism.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

In this course, affect is considered as a form of power—the embodied capacity to affect and be affected. Students explore affective genres of visual culture, such as horror, comedy, melodrama, and pornography. The course draws on a range of theoretical perspectives on affect and emotion, emphasizing work from psychoanalysis, philosophy, feminism, and queer theory.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

A study of contemporary global cinema and recent trends in cinematic style and narrative. The course focuses on non-American/non-European cinemas and co-productions and on important developments in the regional cinemas of Africa and Latin America. The final quarter examines “cinema” from a global perspective, particularly the extent to which new technology and cultural circuits have fostered techniques, styles, and narrative forms.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Examines recent debates in media theory, offering critical frameworks to understand the complexities of what a “medium” is, its forms and aesthetics, how it circulates and interacts with subjects and objects, and how it culturally signifies. Critical inquiry is grounded in a range of media texts, from films to reality TV, video games, and artworks.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Focuses on the changing landscape of national and regional cinemas of Europe from the 1980s to the present, including the advent of the MTV-influenced cinéma du look movement in France and the neorealist, indie-inspired filmmaking in the Balkan and former Soviet states. The contested (re)definition of what now encompasses ”European cinema” is a defining undercurrent of the course.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An introduction to the history and modes of film criticism, using the films of Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford (depending on the instructor) as the focal point. The goal is to familiarize students with the diversity of critical approaches in film studies, to make them better critics, and to do so by understanding both the aesthetic qualities and social forces that have made Hitchcock (or Ford) not only one of the great film personae of the 20th century, but also a marketing device, an aesthetic, a genre, and a field of study.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Networked computing has reconfigured cultural production, distribution, textual practices, and consumption. Students investigate how cinema registers these shifts by analyzing films that address the internet and by examining the ways that computing technologies renew film’s significance. Readings cover the latest conversations in media theory, addressing such issues as photographic indexicality, database narratives, digital aesthetics, software studies, and social media.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Historical trauma has characterized the 20th century. Traumatic events return in unexpected forms, haunting communities and shaping both collective memory and mourning practices. Taking a comparative approach across national cinemas, this course analyzes the historical context, style, and narratives of films that circle around the question of trauma. The course covers German, Israeli, Chilean, Japanese, Russian, and American cinemas.

Credits: 4

Major tendencies in Eastern European cinemas between World War II and the late 1980s are explored. Focusing on Polish, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, and Yugoslav films, students examine the development of these national cinemas in the sociopolitical context of state socialism, and the flourishing of these cinematic traditions into internationally recognized movements and schools. Major thematic and stylistic preoccupations of Eastern European filmmakers are addressed through a close study of works by Polanski, Wajda, Forman, Jancso, Makavejev, Kusturica, and others.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Racial imagery in the U.S., from the minstrel era to the present, is examined. Students interrogate the mythologies of this imagery as depicted in U.S. literature and film; rethink key analytical categories in cinema and literary studies in light of U.S. race history (genre and spectatorship); and study the racial uses of and meanings behind certain technical innovations in U.S. literature and filmmaking.

Credits: 4

Emerging queer cinema is explored in its historical contexts and its relation to contemporary theories of gender, sexuality, and their intersection with race, class, and nationality. The course focuses on the “queering of the gaze,” interrogating conventional notions of representation, desire, identification, filmmaking, and spectatorship. Featured directors: Warhol, Fassbinder, Haynes, Von Trotta, Akerman, Rozema, La Bruce, Araki, Denis, Jarman.

Credits: 4

An in-depth look at French-language cinema “beyond the hexagon”—that is, film and media originating from regions of the world outside of France, including Africa, the Middle East, the French Caribbean, Belgium, Switzerland, and Québec. The impact of diverse geographical settings, cultural histories, and conditions of production and exhibition are addressed, along with such factors as colonialization, hybridity, diaspora, and globalization.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Stanley Kubrick was one of the most original and cinematic of all film directors. His films were highly original in form, with an innovative use of the medium’s primary elements, including editing, composition, and camera movement. Most were also adaptations of classic and contemporary literature. His ability to transform an author’s literary vision into his cinematic vision was one of the keys to his genius. This course analyzes his films on their own terms and in comparison to their literary sources.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

A detailed examination of the notion of film genre, and consideration of one or more classical Hollywood genres, including the western, musical, melodrama, and film noir.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

In light of a resurgence of the western in film and television, this course spans the history of the genre, from the earliest silent screen versions of dime store novels to its contemporary manifestations. While paying careful attention to the western as myth, epic, and landscape art, the course also explores themes of freedom, justice, and individualism as embedded and transformed in the genre.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Film noir represents the intersection of theme and style that gave American films from 1941 to 1955 a new cynicism, moral ambiguity, and atmosphere of terror. This course attempts to define and explore the concept of film noir by close analysis of films like The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, Detour, The Big Heat, The Big Combo, Somewhere in the Night, and Kiss Me Deadly.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Examines the historical, cultural, and production contexts of experimental and avant-garde filmmaking. This course attempts an internationalist breadth of coverage by examining the European historical avant-gardes, the American avant-garde of the pre– and post–World War II periods, the underground and independent film movements of the 1960s, and the function of experimental cinema in shaping personal and communal identities (feminist, queer, and minorities).

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

History of American independent filmmaking from the 1940s to the present. Focuses on a range of directors, including Sam Fuller, Morris Engel, John Cassavetes, and Robert Altman.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An examination of the political imaginary of 21st century Hollywood film. Drawing on the writings of Siegfried Kracauer, students place contemporary American cinema in a comparative historical framework in order to understand the complex ways that ideological formations (imperialism, authoritarianism, racism, neoliberalism, leftism/progressivism) are encoded within the imagery and narratives of popular film and related media.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1510

Investigation of a range of filmmakers who attempt to convey the spiritual through manipulation of film form. Films by Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Tarkovsky, and others.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

In this course on internationally acclaimed auteurs of East Asian cinema (Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea), emphasis is placed on the concepts of “national cinema” and “new waves.” In particular, the critique of nationalism via a radicalization of both content and form in the various new waves is examined.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

A key element of the classical Hollywood tradition (e.g., classical form, the auteur, the star system, or studio practices) is considered in detail.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

American cinema underwent significant upheaval during the 1950s with the crumbling of the studio system, the proliferation of television, fallout from the McCarthy hearings, and the Cold War. This course examines how such directors as Minnelli, Fuller, Welles, Preminger, Sirk, and Ray responded to these extremes, with attention to the historical circumstances and formal innovations that defined the era.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

A study of American mainstream films of the “New Hollywood” or “New American” period of cinema, c. 1965 to the present. Students explore the evolution of American popular cinema in relation to stylistic innovation in international cinema, shifting audience demographics in the domestic market, and industrial and social change in the U.S.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Survey of Italian cinema of the postneorealist era, with special focus on the films of Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An advanced seminar focusing on the criticism of André Bazin, a co-founder of the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and prolific author (What is Cinema? Vol. 1 and 2); the cinema that he championed, including Italian neorealism; his influence on post–World War II film studies and criticism; and his current renaissance in contemporary filmmaking and criticism.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Examination of the rise of New German Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, with special attention paid to cultural, political, and aesthetic contexts. Directors studied include Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlondorff, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Helma Sanders-Brahms.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1510

An examination of cinema in the Israeli and Palestinian context, from the Lumière brothers’ actualities to contemporary productions by Ari Folman, Amos Gitai, Michel Khleifi, and Elia Suleiman. What role has the medium played in articulating ethnoreligious identity, national ideology, traumatic historical experience, and conflicting territorial claims? How do Middle Eastern films challenge traditional conceptions of cinematic space and time?

Credits: 4

The French refer to filmmaking as the seventh art, i.e., an art form on the level of other fine arts. This course examines French cinema from the silent era to 1970, with special focus on poetic realism and the French New Wave. Films by Vigo, Carné, Renoir, Melville, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Resnais, Marker, Varda, and others.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Melodrama is both a historical genre and a mode of imagination that operates across media. To bridge these two aspects of melodrama, the course examines its theatrical origins, the film genres that employ its rhetorical devices (the woman’s film, action and disaster films, horror), and its further development in television series and soap operas.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An examination of how environments are represented across media forms and how they mediate cultural practices. Media forms include landscape painting, nature photography, art installations, music, nature writing, science fiction writing, and eco-cinema. Cultural practices include romantic, philosophical, and aesthetic traditions; indigeneities, nationalism, environmentalism, warfare, eco-mafias; and the arts and sciences of biomedia.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (CIN1500 And CIN1510 ) Or MSA1050 Or ANT1500

A survey of the most important developments in film theory. The goal is to familiarize students with the diversity of critical approaches in film studies and increase understanding of both the aesthetic qualities and social forces at work. Topics include the relationship of film to other forms of media and alternative or counter-hegemonic conceptions of cinema.

Credits: 4

Prepares cinema studies majors for the conception and writing of their senior project. The course emphasizes research skills, the formulation of a prospectus and a literature review, the development of a bibliography and a filmography, and the outline of a schedule for completion of the project.

Credits: 2

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

An introduction to the craft of digital filmmaking: cinematography, lighting, staging, sound mixing, and editing. Students work in groups on short exercises to develop their skills and collaborate on a final short film.

Credits: 3

In this introduction to the basics of documentary filmmaking, students learn what it means to construct a visual argument, with attention to process, place, documentary ethics, and good interviewing techniques. Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400

In this continuation of Documentary Filmmaking, students design, research, and produce their own documentary film. Screenings, class discussions, and group critique complement the production of the film.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM3025 Or CIN3320

An intensive production-oriented course designed to familiarize students with the fundamentals of storytelling in narrative film. The course covers dramatic and stylistic elements of filmmaking. Students direct and edit three short films during the semester, each assignment demonstrating specific principles covered in class.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400

Students closely analyze the construction and purpose of a short sequence in the context of the overall story. This course examines the various emotional and intellectual levels layered within a scene that can and do impact the audience. Students write, direct, and edit a short film during the semester.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: CIN1100 Or FLM3050

An overview of the development and tradition of Chinese cinema through representative screenings of important films from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Students gain a comprehensive understanding of the historical and political context(s) that informed the creation and reception of these films and learn critical scholarly terminology and historical issues related to the analysis of Chinese film.

Credits: 4

Students explore the underlying historical narratives of films from 1930 to 1960 that address topics from early America. These narratives are compared to the ways Hollywood recast historical lessons to suit modern circumstances and to promote “American values” challenged by economic depression and the rise of fascism and communism. Special emphasis is on the works of Ford and Capra.

Credits: 4

Considers the intersections of sexual difference and cinema. Topics include theories of enunciation and sexual difference, female authorship and the idea of “women’s cinema,” gender and genre, woman as spectacle, the female spectator, and feminist film theory. Representations of sexual difference in films by selected male directors are studied as a means of examining the institution(s) of cinematic expression. The bulk of the course is devoted to studying women directors as they attempt to work within and against that institution.

Credits: 4

Surrealist literature, films, and art in France, Spain, and Latin America. Artists include Aragon, Breton, Buñuel, Césaire, Char, Dali, Eluard, and Lorca. Works are read in translation and lectures given in English; students with French and/or Spanish are encouraged to read in the original language.

Credits: 4

In 1991, The Real World pioneered a genre of “unscripted” television that reshaped national media culture, culminating in the reality of the 2016 election. Students study theories of Hall, Habermas and Gramsci to explore how the genre reflects and shapes attitudes of U.S. audiences to surveillance, class conflict, and the performance of truths. Examples include Jersey Shore and American Idol.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050

Students collaborate with students in other cultures, using the Internet to produce videos on subjects of mutual interest. Because the focus is on developing a cross-cultural dialogue, basic video production experience is expected. Before moving to video, the two groups collaboratively write fiction. During the semester, they meet in video conferences with their peers abroad to discuss their productions. Previous semesters have included collaborations with students at universities in Belarus, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, and Lithuania.

Credits: 4

Do photographic images have privileged access to truth? This course explores the complicated relationship between truth and visual (particularly filmic) images. It begins with Plato on the “fakery” that is painting, turns to 17th-century “faithfulness” and “sincerity” in still-life painting and scientific drawing, and looks in depth at 20th-century writings about the nature of photography and realism in representation.

Credits: 4

A critical examination of influential attempts to understand the nature of the cinematic medium. Questions raised include: Is film a fine art? Must a movie “represent reality” if it is to succeed as a movie? Are there certain insights into human experience that are better expressed through film than through other media? Readings include Siegfried Kracauer, André Bazin, and Stanley Cavell.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (CIN1500 And CIN1510 ) Or PHI1515 Or PHI2110 Or PHI3212

An introduction to the craft of digital filmmaking: cinematography, lighting, staging, sound mixing, and editing. Students work in groups on short exercises to develop their skills and collaborate on a final short film.

Credits: 3

A series of weekly exercises to develop the student’s ability to write short stories. The problems of exposition, characterization, conflict, and action are discussed and studied. Limited to freshman film majors.

Credits: 3

A series of weekly exercises to develop the student’s ability to write short stories. The problems of exposition, characterization, conflict, and action are discussed and studied. Limited to freshman film majors.

Credits: 3

Introduces the possibilities of film technique. Short projects in motion picture cinematography, lighting, sound recording, and continuity editing, augmented by lectures, demonstrations, film analysis, and readings. In the spring, systems of cinematic structure and form are emphasized.

Credits: 5

Introduces the possibilities of film technique. Short projects in motion picture cinematography, lighting, sound recording, and continuity editing, augmented by lectures, demonstrations, film analysis, and readings. In the spring, systems of cinematic structure and form are emphasized.

Credits: 5

An introduction to the role of the actor in filmmaking situations. Freshman film students engage in actual acting training to learn how actors and filmmakers can best interact and to experience how best to understand the acting process.

Credits: 2

Practical aspects of documentary filmmaking. Students produce four to five short films each term (including describing a process, a place, an interview, and a film portrait). Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.

Credits: 5

Students learn the fundamentals of film language through editing and are provided with professionally produced picture and sound rushes that they sync-up, structure, and edit into a complete film. Additional individual and group projects are assigned.

Credits: 3

Students learn the fundamentals of film language through editing and are provided with professionally produced picture and sound rushes that they sync-up, structure, and edit into a complete film. Additional individual and group projects are assigned.

Credits: 3

Practical aspects of documentary filmmaking. Students produce four to five short films each term (including describing a process, a place, an interview, and a film portrait). Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.

Credits: 5

Basics of photography, camera operation, crew organization, picture composition, and lighting.

Credits: 2

Camera movement, angles and blocking, studio lighting procedures, and introduction to gaffing and electrics.

Credits: 2

PREREQ: FLM2090 Or TFI2090

In this introduction to directing narrative film, students produce scenes from their own original and previously produced scripts. They chose materials and cast, direct, and edit four to five short narrative films each term.

Credits: 3

The techniques of writing for the screen in both the narrative and documentary forms. Emphasis on the construction of dramatic material without the use of spoken dialogue leads to a better understanding of the power and importance of visual imagery as a prime component in storytelling, and to a heightened awareness of the camera’s role in the writing process.

Credits: 3

In this introduction to the basics of documentary filmmaking, students learn what it means to construct a visual argument, with attention to process, place, documentary ethics, and good interviewing techniques. Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400

In this continuation of Documentary Filmmaking, students design, research, and produce their own documentary film. Screenings, class discussions, and group critique complement the production of the film.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM3025 Or CIN3320

An intensive production-oriented course designed to familiarize students with the fundamentals of storytelling in narrative film. The course covers dramatic and stylistic elements of filmmaking. Students direct and edit three short films during the semester, each assignment demonstrating specific principles covered in class.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM1050 Or CMS1400 Or COM1400

Students closely analyze the construction and purpose of a short sequence in the context of the overall story. This course examines the various emotional and intellectual levels layered within a scene that can and do impact the audience. Students write, direct, and edit a short film during the semester.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: CIN1100 Or FLM3050

Individual projects in advanced cinematography.

Credits: 2

Advanced techniques in cinematography and lighting, with group and individual projects.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM3090 Or TFI3090

An advanced two-semester course designed to explore the technique, practice, and theory of motion picture directing. Exercises in mise-en-scène, screenwriting, and fiction filmmaking. Students must write, cast, and direct a complete narrative short film for presentation at the end of the spring term.

Credits: 4

An advanced two-semester course designed to explore the technique, practice, and theory of motion picture directing. Exercises in mise-en-scène, screenwriting, and fiction filmmaking. Students must write, cast, and direct a complete narrative short film for presentation at the end of the spring term.

Credits: 4

Examines the role of the director in casting the right actor, and aiding actors in creating character and performances through rehearsal, discussion, improvisation, and on-set techniques. Students study directing, learning techniques of acting and what actors need from the director in terms of preparation and performance.

Credits: 2

A practical course in the writing of screenplays. A preliminary screenplay for the senior thesis film must be completed by the end of the semester.

Credits: 3

A highly advanced film production seminar offering a unique opportunity to learn in tandem with students in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts in on-location production settings. Production is complemented by screenings, class discussions, and demonstrations.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: FLM3090

An intermediate-level course in the practice of documentary filmmaking. A series of exercises in 16mm and video documentary production are complemented by screenings, class discussions, group projects, and demonstrations. Students research, design, and complete a documentary film.

Credits: 4

An intermediate-level course in the practice of documentary filmmaking. A series of exercises in 16mm and video documentary production are complemented by screenings, class discussions, group projects, and demonstrations. Students research, design, and complete a documentary film.

Credits: 4

Students conceptualize and produce experimental media projects using techniques and concepts of avant-garde filmmaking, video art, and performance art. Nontraditional and personal forms are emphasized. Construction of a DVD anthology and off-campus excursions are also required. Both FLM 3610 (fall) and 3620 (spring) are required for film students planning an experimental thesis project for junior review.

Credits: 3

Students conceptualize and produce experimental media projects using techniques and concepts of avant-garde filmmaking, video art, and performance art. Nontraditional and personal forms are emphasized. Construction of a DVD anthology and off-campus excursions are also required. Both FLM 3610 (fall) and 3620 (spring) are required for film students planning an experimental thesis project for junior review.

Credits: 3

Committed to using sound tracks as fully as the image track, this course implements theory by teaching choice and placement of microphones, dialogue track prep, music editing, use of sound FX and tone, and prepping for a professional sound mix. Students visit with a professional sound editor and attend foley, dubbing, and mix studio demonstrations.

Credits: 3

Strategies for the structuring and pacing of films, taught through the editing of specific film projects.

Credits: 3

Prepares students for entry into the film industry. Covers basic techniques used to raise money for, produce, and distribute films.

Credits: 2

Construction and writing of screenplays, with exercises in characterization, plotting, etc. Story treatments for both fiction and documentary films are stressed.

Credits: 2

An intensive, one-semester workshop course in which students write, produce and direct a short documentary or narrative film. Production proceeds only after faculty approval of the screenplay, casting, and production schedules. Students assist in the production of one fellow classmate’s film. Projects developed for this course may be used in conjunction with senior theses requirements of other majors.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: (FLM3050 And FLM3025 ) Or (FLM3610 And FLM3620 )

An introduction to theories of the media, visual, and performing arts. Using semiotics as a point of departure, students explore the language and iconography of visual communication. The course focuses on works of art, advertising, television, and the web as social contexts of cultural production and analyses the role that ordinary people play in the production of media.

Credits: 3

An examination of media forms (e.g., postcards, radio, TV, internet, mobile media technologies) and media institutions (e.g., movie studios, marketing and advertising companies, regulatory agencies) within historical and cultural contexts. Students explore the multiple ways that human engagements with the world are mediated and how media forms contribute to the production of social norms, practices, and senses of identity and community.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: MSA1050 Or NME1050

Students focus on how humans are represented and configured across media platforms, how the self is culturally constructed, and how technology continually redefines the meaning of “human.” The class also considers what these figurations indicate about contemporary political subjectivities, gender identities, and species belonging. The work of notable thinkers, including William Gibson, Masamune Shiroh, Stellarc, and Spike Jonze, is studied.

Credits: 3

Examines the connections between computers and culture, with a critical look at how computers may be changing and shaping culture, and how culture affects people’s use and understanding of computers. The course focuses in particular on the ways in which gender, race, and class affect people’s experiences with and understanding of computers. Both work and leisure uses of computers are considered.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050

Examines cultural representations of poverty, work, and wealth in American popular culture. Students consider how mediated narratives of class conflict reflect and reinforce divisions between social classes (the 99 and 1%) and within them (immigrants and “white working class”). Students develop a deeper appreciation of how class “works” as an economic and political system, and how it is lived.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: MSA1050 Or NME1050

In 1991, The Real World pioneered a genre of “unscripted” television that reshaped national media culture, culminating in the reality of the 2016 election. Students study theories of Hall, Habermas and Gramsci to explore how the genre reflects and shapes attitudes of U.S. audiences to surveillance, class conflict, and the performance of truths. Examples include Jersey Shore and American Idol.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050

Media convergence refers to large-scale changes in the ownership and production of media content, as well as the role that audiences and consumers have in its development. This course examines media convergence from the perspectives of queer theory and history, and asks how queer identities, sensibilities, styles, and practices both shape and are shaped by media convergence.

Credits: 4

An intensive examination of critical and theoretical work on media, society, and the arts. Classic and contemporary theories (e.g., Marxism, structuralism, organizational and cultural production, various cultural studies approaches) and topics (e.g., hegemony, cultural capital, high vs. low culture, elite and commercialized culture) are explored.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (MSA1050 Or NME1050 ) And MSA2200

Ethnography, one of the key methodological innovations of anthropology, is used in this course to examine life in a media-saturated world. Focusing on an emergent ethnographic literature that examines the relationships between mass media, popular culture, and social and technological networking, the course situates everyday interactions with media within broader theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (MSA1050 Or NME1050 ) And MSA2200

Students look at forms of production and exchange in various contexts throughout the world that are alternatives to dominant, formal economies. These include trash picking and trash art-making, piracy and counterfeiting, independent farming, and alternative banking. Students consider the notion of value in a variety of ways and trace how production, exchange, circulation, and consumption elaborate new forms of social life.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (MSA1050 Or NME1050 ) Or ANT1500 Or CAN1500

Focuses on the histories, politics, and aesthetics of drag. Students engage a variety of work in gender and queer studies, and they also learn how to do drag through a series of practice-based workshops.

Credits: 4

The topics, which vary, are selected from among the special interests of faculty.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: MSA1050 Or NME1050

An introductory survey of music, theatre, and dance in Western and non-Western cultures, including the relationships between music and religion, dance and weddings, theatre and curing. The course also explores the performing arts as aesthetic phenomena in their own right. Live performances by non-Western performers and optional field trips are planned.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: ANT1500 Or MSA1050 Or NME1050

An examination of contemporary art outside of the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Looking at painting-based performances of the 1950s, feminist body art, guerrilla television, and current political interventions based in digital media, students identify the strategies artists used to create new forms, and assess their success in modifying our understanding of the world.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994

A focused inquiry into the process of designing for, and the creation of, interactive platforms for the purposes of entertainment, persuasion, recreation, and/or human enrichment where the viewer is an active participant. This course is an intensive investigation into considerations surrounding interactive, or experience-oriented, design spaces, and samples supplemental readings from sociology, anthropology, and game theory. You will be required to work collaboratively to pursue concepts through a series of physical and digital investigations.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: (DES2460 And DES3510 ) And DES3200

Builds on the principles and skills of time-based and interactive design introduced in DES 2460. Technique, theory, and practice are further explored through projects using time, on-screen spatiality, transition, kinetic typography, narrative, and sound. Projects address linear and nonlinear environments such as film and television titling, DVD menus, web splash pages, and graphics for mobile devices.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: DES2460 Or VDE2460

A combined lecture/studio course that examines ethical and social issues in contemporary artistic production and design. The goal is to develop active research about such urgent issues as ecology, body politics and gender, race and urban justice, and human rights, with respect to new futures. Projects incorporate art installations, visualizations, websites, performances, and public campaigns by focusing on creative public engagement.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: NME2100 Or (DES2600 And DES2460 )

Focuses on print communication, primarily graphic design, in the Western world from the late 19th century to the present. A brief summary of important historical precedents launches a chronological series of lectures on significant movements and individuals and the economic, political, and technological developments that have influenced modern and contemporary print communication.

Credits: 4

An introduction to problem solving, using computers. Emphasis is on programming, including the study of syntax, semantics, logical structures, graphics, and object-oriented programming. General topics of algorithm development, formulating problems, finding methods for computer solutions, differences among computer languages, and trends in the industry are also discussed. Experience is acquired through hands-on labs and several programming assignments.

Credits: 4

Building on the programming introduction in the prerequisite course, students learn about scripting for websites, including HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and php. Topics include the use of cookies, localStorage, video/audio, geolocation, an application program interface such as the Google Maps API, responsive design, and accessibility. Comparisons are made between scripting and compiled languages and client versus server computing.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1450 Or MAT1540

Introduces concepts and skills used in analyzing and designing interfaces for computer applications. As students study techniques and “rules of thumb,” they discover that the design and implementation of each interface is a unique challenge, which requires creativity and consideration of technical, aesthetic, and psychological factors. Includes the use of XML, XSL, XHTML-MP, VoiceXML, and usability studies.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1520

Social software is explored both from technical and critical perspectives. Hands-on work in conceptualizing, designing, and developing social software projects is informed by examining the evolution of social software and its impact on society. Includes modules on version control, collaborative open source software projects and application programming interfaces. Projects may range in complexity from simple websites to data-driven web applications to real-time applications.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: MAT1420 Or NME1420 Or NME1450 Or MAT1520 Or NME1520

Covers the key conceptual and practical aspects of networking and security, which are increasingly important in the era of the Internet, the connected enterprise and our ever expanding socially networked world. TCP/IP communications protocols are explored at multiple levels of the protocol stack. Performance and reliability issues are also studied, using campus intranet and internet connections. Security topics include encryption, authentication, denial of service attacks, and case studies.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: MAT1520 Or NME1520

An introduction to theories of the media, visual, and performing arts. Using semiotics as a point of departure, students explore the language and iconography of visual communication. The course focuses on works of art, advertising, television, and the web as social contexts of cultural production and analyses the role that ordinary people play in the production of media.

Credits: 3

Examines the connections between computers and culture, with a critical look at how computers may be changing and shaping culture, and how culture affects people’s use and understanding of computers. The course focuses in particular on the ways in which gender, race, and class affect people’s experiences with and understanding of computers. Both work and leisure uses of computers are considered.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050

Media convergence refers to large-scale changes in the ownership and production of media content, as well as the role that audiences and consumers have in its development. This course examines media convergence from the perspectives of queer theory and history, and asks how queer identities, sensibilities, styles, and practices both shape and are shaped by media convergence.

Credits: 4

A hands-on, introductory audio class in which students learn how to use sound in practical and creative ways, in three phases of production: acquisition, manipulation, and reproduction. Students also learn some of the history of artists and makers who use sound as their medium, as well of some of the technical and theoretical aspects of how sound is created and perceived.

Credits: 3

A hands-on introduction to the language of design and design principles with emphasis on composition, color, and type. Software for vector image creation is taught alongside understanding the full design process, from visual research to beta testing. Print output is introduced, although the focus is on screen-based media.

Credits: 4

Using a visual environment that provides immediate feedback, students are taught the basic principles of programming and, by extension, math. Lectures focus on key aspects of programming and how working artists use code creatively in their practice. In this course, math is never the end but rather the means to problem-solve during the creative process.

Credits: 4

Students take this course in the semester that they apply for Advance Standing. Grading is on a pass/no credit basis. Advanced Standing is a portfolio review that asks students to present work from the broad range of foundation classes they have taken. After applying for and receiving Advanced Standing, New Media majors pursue a program of upper-level study in which they may pursue a broad range of individual interests.

Credits: 1

Examines the interplay between new art forms and technologies from early modernism through today. Focusing on how the two fields have developed in relation to each other, the course addresses two questions: what is the relationship between technology, technique, and art, and how has it changed over time? This is both an art survey course and a study of related philosophical questions.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050

An introduction to video as a creative visual, auditory, and spatial medium. Students learn the fundamentals of video production with the goal of making original work in the genres of single-channel tape, performance, and installation. At the same time, students are introduced to key works in the history of time-based arts in a weekly thematic program of viewing, listening, reading, and critique.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME1010 Or NME1100 Or NME1060 Or VIS1330

An intermediate lecture/studio course that explores techniques for creating dynamic, poetic, and lifelike animations in code. Students learn techniques to program movement and the simulation of natural systems and behaviors, and develop works that respond to various inputs. Projects are developed using open-source software environments like Processing and p5.js.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: VIS1450 Or MAT1520 Or NME1450 Or NME1520 Or MAT1420 Or NME1420

An exploration of the ways in which various media technologies promote investment and disinvestment in history, community, and tradition. This course pursues the argument that technology does not derive from, but creates the fundamental structures of human experience, affecting people socially, politically, psychologically, and neurologically. Primary authors include Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, Stiegler, and Malabou.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME1050 Or MSA1050

Students gain a solid understanding of website creation, using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. Scripting languages and libraries are also introduced to create more advanced interactions or animations. Along with technical skills, students learn web design fundamentals and how artists have used and even served as authors of the web since its inception.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME1160

Students collaborate with students in other cultures, using the Internet to produce videos on subjects of mutual interest. Because the focus is on developing a cross-cultural dialogue, basic video production experience is expected. Before moving to video, the two groups collaboratively write fiction. During the semester, they meet in video conferences with their peers abroad to discuss their productions. Previous semesters have included collaborations with students at universities in Belarus, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, and Lithuania.

Credits: 4

A growing dialogue surrounding internet art echoes the rhetoric of community-oriented art practices and public art movements of the past. Topics include an introduction to the history of public art; current internet art practice and theory; how networks can serve physical situations or communities, rather than being a purely screen-based phenomenon; policies that are shaping the functionality of the internet; and new artistic possibilities that arise as ubiquitous computing integrates with public space.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2300

A hands-on examination of what it means to live in an information age. Students learn to make sense—and sometimes, new meaning—of data through creative visualizations. The course considers audience together with the politics of information and the persuasion of the visual.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME1160

Examines how contemporary artists and activists are using print media to communicate ideas in public spaces. The course also more generally considers how printed matter has been used to expand popular consciousness since the invention of the printing press. Students produce their own print interventions for public spaces and incorporate digital media to sustain interaction.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

Focuses on the relationship between digitally aided production processes and traditional techniques of drawing and object building. Emphasis is placed on the fabrication of objects and prints in multiples that interact with physical space and the body. Students are also encouraged to develop their own drawing tools and initiate ideas around making with new media technologies.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

The first rule of guerrilla warfare is to know the terrain. Today’s terrain is one of symbols, media spectacles, and technology that artists are uniquely equipped to navigate. In this course, students learn to combine sociological research, communications strategy, technological methods, and artistic tactics to plan effective social interventions. Students should bring their passion, thoughtfulness, compassion, and planning skills.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

Focuses on establishing a broad understanding of the 3-D game engine Unity and a critical understanding of the discourse surrounding modern virtual environments. Students are encouraged to deviate from traditional 3-D games, bringing content and forms of storytelling from other areas of interest. Artists and texts that examine our cultural fascination with the virtual are presented in class. Students are introduced to Unity and to the programming language C#, but some prior programming experience is expected.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME1450 Or MAT1520

Students explore the various ways that artists distribute and present video and the moving image. Examining issues of audience, the physical experience, and the social aspects of media distribution, this course focuses on the life of video after it is rendered. Topics include video installation, the moving image online, live video performance, and video remixes and re-edits.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

Using Pure Data, an open-source, graphical programming environment, students experiment with real-time media processing while exploring conceptual concerns and implications through historical and theoretical readings. Students are encouraged to explore personal experiments integrating these conceptual ideas into projects that may include algorithmic or interactive audio performances, screen-based visuals, or interaction with physical devices.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

Focusing on specialized topics in new media, students work closely with faculty to explore new areas of their practice and research. Students develop projects in particular area of specialization. The curriculum will vary in relation to the faculty member’s practice and research.

Credits: 4

What does it mean to be a photographer in the age of ubiquitous imaging technologies (e.g., cellphones, surveillance cameras, satellites, and drones), social media, and online image databases? Students explore questions related to the status of photography, consider interdisciplinary approaches using emerging technologies (including online platforms, laser cutters, and drones), and work collaboratively in a studio-based environment.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: PHO1100 Or NME1010

An introduction to fine art digital printing and contemporary digital photography. Students expand their two-dimensional image-making skills while developing their artistic vision through the creation of a cohesive body of print-based work. Topics concerning the importance of contemporary photography are discussed in class through lectures and presentations. Students are expected to combine contemporary ideas with the rigor of printing quality images.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

An advanced workshop for highly motivated students who have expressed interest and fluency in time-based video work. The class is devoted to the production of various independent video projects, culminating in a thesis project; in addition, students do multiple presentations focusing on situating their work within historical and contemporary contexts. A wide variety of time-based artworks are explored, including single-channel, multi-channel, and video installation work. Students are expected to have competency with digital video cameras, sound, and editing techniques.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: (SCP2420 Or VSC2420 ) Or NME2420 And NME2100

An exploration of the ways that graphic techniques can be used by video artists, animators, and designers in their work. Through lectures and presentations, students are exposed to the work of artists who use a variety of approaches, from abstract animation to kinetic text and transformation of live-action video. Students learn about key framing, matting, compositing, working in 3-D spaces, and other computer-based video processes. A special emphasis is placed on issues in contemporary video art, and the ways in which video graphics are used to explore these ideas.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

People are entangled in a dark ecology, in which humans, marshes, car parks, and foreign rubber plantations are all intimately connected. Students explore methods of investigation drawn from both scientific and artistic modes of inquiry, such as mapping, poetic and scientific sensing, visualization, and photography. How can public interventions shift how individuals perceive and represent their deep connections to environmental systems?

Credits: 3

PREREQ: NME1450 Or MAT1520

Student groups are paired with local organizations with which they work throughout the semester. After site visits, interviews, and research, students identify a specific problem or need that they can address through media art production. Students learn about the inner workings and critical impact of participating organizations while helping to envision and implement change through creative thinking and technical know-how.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

Students break down the physical barrier of the personal computer and bring computing into the “real” world. The main tool used for this purpose is the Arduino, an open-source micro-controller popular with artists and makers. Students are introduced to theories of game design (both historical and modern) and apply them to their class projects; the course also explores the societal implications of building and programming and repurposing personal electronics, and examines artists and makers who have used physical computing for creative expression.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: (NME1420 Or MAT1420 ) Or (NME1520 Or MAT1520 )

The ease with which digital tools allow people to copy, paste, and recombine creative work challenges long-held ideas about originality and creativity. In this combined studio/lecture course, students examine the theory and history of appropriation, sampling, quotation, and reuse in the arts, while simultaneously creating their own multidisciplinary works that engage with contemporary ideas related to these issues.

Credits: 4

Considers how artists have traditionally managed interactive spaces and how new technologies expand and shift the meaning of interactivity in contemporary art. “Circuit bending,” an approach to electronics that repurposes older machines and toys, is also introduced. Students create their own interactive artworks; emphasis is on nontraditional uses of materials. Arduino microcontrollers and the Processing open-source platform are demonstrated in class and available to students.

Credits: 4

The internet is examined as a tool for artistic expression and action. Students consider what is unique about the internet; exploit its potential as a means for communication, distribution, simulation, and interaction; and experiment with web production. A wide range of internet art projects are studied to stimulate ideas and give students an understanding of what is happening in the “net art” world. Students are expected to challenge standard notions of how the web functions.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2730 Or MAT3730

Students develop a definition of new media through a range of learning experiences. These include a survey of work in the field, with guest artists and class trips to galleries, media production houses, and events; students’ critical writing and interactive discussions about what they are experiencing; and teacher-structured and student-initiated collaborative projects in which students test different creative roles, using various media.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: NME2100

Students create custom projects using inexpensive, bank card–sized computers for art installations and works for the public good. In the process, their knowledge of text-based interfaces, free culture, collaboration, circuit building, and the history of creative computing/hacking is deepened.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: NME1450 Or MAT1420 Or MAT1520

Students meet weekly to discuss some of the seminal texts in new media and to make presentations on their senior project proposals. By the end of the semester, each student has a website describing his or her project and a working timeline.

Credits: 2

Students meet weekly to develop their senior projects further, design the new media exhibition, and practice writing proposals to external organizations and preparing their résumés.

Credits: 2

PREREQ: NME4880

An introduction to the basic concepts and techniques of digital photography. Exposure, composition, color, retouching, resolution, and preparation of image files for on-screen and print use are among the techniques covered. Assignments include both technical and aesthetic concerns.

Credits: 4

Students explore the effect of landscapes and surroundings in Pisciotta, Italy, and develop their personal vision by observing and leveraging those landscapes and translating their experiences into powerful images. Working with digital cameras (a simple one is fine), students create a personal photographic essay, depicting what they see through the lens of their surroundings.

Credits: 4

In this digital fabrication course, students explore the relationship between the three-dimensional world and digital technology. In this creative new-media environment, students are given a foundation for developing 3-D content and integrating it into their preferred field. Students generate digital objects, prepare them for real-world fabrication, and create virtual-reality simulations and photorealistic sculpture proposals. This course will utilize laser-cutters, CNC router and 3D printers.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: VIS1260 Or NME2100

Sound is explored as material in the context of the visual arts, using DAT recorders, sampling, synthesis, processing, computers, sensor control, and MIDI systems. Projects may include making sonic instruments, sounding objects, and experimental video; ambient, interactive, performative, and multimedia installations; and surround-sound DVDs. Advanced technological means enable uncharted explorations in the time-based arts.

Credits: 3

Explores the genre of alternate reality or pervasive gaming currently used as an alternative to traditional performance by contemporary theatrical and visual artists, dancers, and musicians. The blurring distinctions between game and narrative are examined, opening new possibilities for performance. Students design and stage their own live alternate-reality game as a means of storytelling or extend an existing narrative through transmedia.

Credits: 4

An overview of electronic media and its relationship to the fine arts. This course covers the genre from its infancy to the present and focuses on the study of the art and artists critical to the genre’s development. Lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and visiting artists are augmented by assigned readings, critical writing, and examinations.

Credits: 3

An introduction to the basic techniques of writing for the stage, beginning with the story. Multiple short writing assignments emphasize character, plot, diction, subtext, and meaning. They include writing from personal experience, adapting a short story and a classical play, and using a current news story as inspiration. Students discuss Aristotle’s elements as they pertain to the scene, apply basic elements of the craft, read several short plays, and attend performances on campus and in New York City.

Credits: 4

Introduces the student to writing a dramatic story for the screen, placing an emphasis on discovery, good work habits, critical assessment, and rewriting as essential to the professional writer. Through numerous assignments, students learn the basics of dramatic story structure, revealing character, writing dialogue, genre, and use of story suspense. All techniques are applied in a final short screenplay.

Credits: 4

What makes a play alive, provocative, and vital? Using classic plays as well as new dramatic works being produced and streamed online, students will examine the ideas and mechanics behind writing and making plays. We’ll look closely at the role of the audience, and study key texts and theories, including Aristotle’s Poetics, Brecht’s Epic Theatre, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and other theories and philosophies being discussed and tested today. The semester will culminate in the development of a performative piece for the virtual environment.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1010

Using an existing short piece of fiction, students delineate the elements of the story, experiencing their importance and power; translate the short story into a screenplay for a narrative film; and complete two drafts of a 25-page screenplay. In the process, they learn the techniques of adaptation for the screen and a deeper level of dramatic story structure. Emphasis is on discovering the dramatic character when evaluating the merits of a particular adaptation, which extends to evaluating one’s own ideas for a screenplay; introducing genre and story types; and research as a dramatist’s fundamental tool.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010

Building on PSW 1000, students read and attend new plays, develop in-class writing exercises, and then write and revise a 30-page play.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1000 Or THP3590 Or DWR1000 Or DRA3590

An introduction to full-length narrative and the three-act structure. The art and craft of screenwriting are explored through analysis and developing, writing, and rewriting a longer screenplay (60 pages), with an emphasis on what Hollywood looks for in a screenplay. Techniques covered include voice-over, establishing shots, montages, and creating tension and payoff. The business of the screenwriter, how to pitch, and finding work/selling a screenplay are also covered.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW2000 Or DWR2000

In recent years, opportunities in nonfiction work have grown significantly. In this course, students screen and analyze documentary films, and produce their own short nonfiction film on digital video. Field assignments include researching and conducting interviews; written assignments include narration exercises, documentary summaries, and scripts. Students also learn the basics of Final Cut Pro editing software.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1010 And CIN1500

Explores techniques for developing narrative and dramatic structures in specific spaces/sites. Students read, view, and discuss sample works and theoretical investigation as a means to contextualize our inquiry, while also doing a series of ‘building block’ exercises both in and out of the classroom. Small modular writing assignments build to a final full-length piece.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1010

An exploration of revision techniques and strategies in a workshop environment. Students revise existing material through examinations of character, dialogue, and structure; text analysis; and other tools. First drafts and production drafts of contemporary American plays are also studied and discussed.

Credits: 4

Students research, gather, and incorporate ideas from a variety of sources to write a new full-length play. Weekly readings of plays are paired with focused writing exercises. The course culminates in a public reading of excerpts from students’ completed plays. Students also explore the business of playwriting, touring a theatre in New York City and meeting with artistic staff.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW2010 Or THP3591 Or DWR2010

Explores the fine anatomy of writing the scene, with emphasis on writers looking at their work from the perspective of the director and on working with actors. Students write and direct a dramatic scene in digital video and learn to produce their video, using Final Cut Pro editing software and the basics of camera/lighting techniques.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW2000 Or DWR2000

Screenings and discussion of various forms of the medium, including the sitcom, television movies, and documentary and experimental forms. Students write a script that is critiqued in class and rewritten, with concentration on the world of the story, tone, character, style, dramatic tension, pacing, and evolving narrative.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010

Examines the history and craft of storytelling in musical theatre. Students consider song topic and placement to structure a short original musical. The ability to read and write music is not required.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1000 And PSW1010

Students experience the real-world model of collaboratively writing a television series in a “writer’s room.” With the instructor as “show runner,” the class creates a half-hour series and together writes a pilot episode. Each student then writes an episode for the series. Episodic story structure, weaving multiple story lines, the tradition television series, and newly emerging variations are covered.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010

The landscape of short-form, online, episodic storytelling is surveyed, and each student is required to conceive a short-form episodic series, create the show “bible,” and write and produce a pilot “webisode” for that series. Emphasis is on story structure and telling a story in a nontraditional form.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW1010 Or DWR1010

Students will gain an understanding of the craft of writing and combining lyrics and music. Focus is placed on the process of artistic collaboration as librettists and composers are paired to create original songs. Students will also survey musical writing teams and repertoire. Composers must have the ability to create scores and regularly perform their work.

Credits: 4

Students develop ideas for their senior project—a play or screenplay. They research, develop, and present their scenarios to the class for response and critique.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: PSW2000 And PSW2010 And (CIN1500 Or CIN1510 Or CIN1030 ) And (THP2885 Or THP2890 )

Writers and actors learn tools for working together on new plays. Taught by a playwright and a director, the class studies different collaborative models, including devised theatre, and explores communication strategies for working through creative friction. The course culminates in a final showcase on campus.

Credits: 3

During the solitary pursuit of writing their first full-length play or screenplay, students come together regularly to share in-process work for feedback and critique. A completion schedule is created, and assignments are given to aid in the scriptwriting discovery process. Classes are also devoted to visiting professionals who relate their experiences in the business of being a playwright or screenwriter.

Credits: 2

PREREQ: DWR3880 Or THP3890 Or PSW3880

Build strategies and routines for writing about reading. Through short readings, demonstrations, and guided practice, students study writing about texts in a variety of genres, including the literary essay, personal narrative and memoir, and the researched essay. Requirements offer the opportunity to apply class exercises to reading and writing assignments in other courses.

Credits: 2

Students receive supplemental instruction in critical thinking and writing, writing mechanics, organization, and style. They also learn techniques for effective workshopping and provide regular feedback on each other’s work.

Credits: 1

The ability to express ideas clearly and effectively in writing is essential to success as a student and citizen. Students learn and practice these skills throughout their academic career at Purchase College, beginning with College Writing. This is an intensive course that teaches students to:

1. produce strong written work at the college level
2. read and think critically
3. take a position and develop an argument of their own
4. research a topic and write a well-organized paper that develops their claims in dialogue with the sources
5. revise and improve their papers
6. present their ideas orally

Credits: 4

How do we create meaningful writing for an online readership that scrolls quickly and relies less on the printed page than any other generation? Students will write essays, features, and criticism and identify online publications that suit each project, while guest lecturers offer insight on engaging social media to share reported stories. Students co-edit Expose, Purchase’s online expository writing magazine.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: WRI1110

What makes a person an insider or an outsider? Beginning with personal experience and writing, students explore the ways in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class affect individual, communal, national, and transnational identity and belonging in American culture. In connecting multiple levels of experience, students engage in critical reading, research, analysis, writing, and revision, building on their strong skills in preparation for upper-level work.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: Or WRI1110

Though often seen as simply a test of students’ knowledge and ideas, essays go far beyond what is generally required in courses. Students in this course read and experiment with a wide variety of critical, journalistic, academic, personal, and experimental essay forms. In the process, they further develop their skills as critical thinkers and writers.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: WRI1110 Or WRI2110

In the personal essay, writers adopt distinct points of view, moving beyond the emotional to analytical and reasoned positions. Topics can include personal reflections, thoughts on daily life, art analysis, and political arguments. Students read and analyze contemporary essays and “workshop” each other’s writing. Requirements include attending instructor-supervised events (films, performances, guest speakers) outside of class for some writing assignments.

Credits: 4

Students develop basic language skills through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. They learn components of academic writing, including paragraphs and thesis statements, and gain critical reading and analytical skills through work with basic texts. Students share ideas and experiences both verbally and in writing, and improve grammar and vocabulary through writing activities, academic exercises, and workshops.

Credits: 4

Students gain advanced language skills through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Working with more advanced texts, they further develop critical reading and analytical skills. They gain experience with the essay form, and learn to write definition, process analysis, descriptive, and opinion pieces. Students share ideas and experiences both verbally and in writing, and continue to strengthen grammar and vocabulary.

Credits: 4

Students develop advanced language skills through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Working with advanced texts, they further develop critical reading and analytical skills. They gain experience with academic writing, including cause and effect, comparative, narrative, and opinion pieces, and learn basic research skills. Students practice analyzing information and expressing ideas verbally and in writing, and continue to strengthen grammar and vocabulary.

Credits: 4

This introduction to the art and science of video production focuses on developing visual literacy and postproduction skills. Starting with an examination of basic video technology and traditional media aesthetics, all stages of the video production process are covered. Students receive introductory technical training and hands-on experience with digital camcorders, microphones, and nonlinear editing equipment.

Credits: 3

The history and impact of communication technologies are examined, beginning with speech and moving forward through print and digital media, advertising and public relations, media regulation and potential, and ending with a consideration of the future.

Credits: 4

The art of the spoken word is studied in many of its forms, including political speeches, story-based podcasts, and slam poetry. Students research and create concise stories; examine the role that rhythm, cadence, structure, and sound patterns play in creating a memorable performance; and then practice delivering the message for their intended audience. Uses and impacts for inspiring, informing, and persuading are considered.

Credits: 2

Students develop expertise in public speaking by preparing and presenting different types of speeches for a variety of purposes. The focus is on the main elements of planning and delivering a speech: the message, the speaker, the audience, and the occasion. All speeches are critiqued in class. As an integral part of the course, students learn PowerPoint.

Credits: 4

Students will learn how to collaborate in order to work with others to achieve goals. Those goals may be personal, social and/or task oriented. Through practical, hands-on exercises, students will apply theories of group interaction to demonstrate their working knowledge of effective process. Students will be able to recognize when groups become stuck and brainstorm ways to move forward.

Credits: 3

Students will learn the fundamental principles of design and how these relate to effective visual communication. We will explore the role that advertising plays in society and how to create effective visual advertisements. Students will also learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and how to shoot and edit photos.

Credits: 3

Introduces basic concepts of intercultural communication. By examining communication practices in diverse contexts (e.g., family, education, workplace, health and recreation), students learn how cultural rules and norms are enacted and how violations are sanctioned. International factors, cross-cultural competence, and global citizenship are discussed with the goal of increasing understanding, enhancing each student’s ability to interact appropriately in the U.S. and abroad.

Credits: 2

In this writing intensive course, students build foundational skills in writing for a variety of media and purposes: print, digital, and broadcast media, public relations and advertising. Students begin to explore the divergent applications of written communication by analyzing their roles as both consumers of and writers for media. Ethical and legal issues are also introduced.

Credits: 4

The First Amendment allows the mass media certain freedoms to publish, broadcast, advertise, and promote. Yet with those rights come responsibilities. This course examines the legal and ethical dimensions and issues involved with contemporary American mass media.

Credits: 4

An interdisciplinary (social science and humanities) course that emphasizes critical thinking in understanding the social and historical effects of mass media in the U.S. and throughout the world. This course begins in 19th-century America, when print media shaped and defined the national culture, and concludes in the current century with the mass-media convergence of print, electronic, and digital multimedia that is shaping and defining our global culture.

Credits: 4

Students become acquainted with methods that communication practitioners use to conduct different types of research. Goals include learning to identify, understand, and evaluate diverse research strategies; distinguish between qualitative and quantitative methods, the types of knowledge they produce (big/small data), and the strengths and the weaknesses of each; and think critically about objectivity, researcher standpoint, and research ethics.

Credits: 4

What are the different forms messages take in spoken and written communication? After examining actual messages in different contexts and assessing their impact on individuals and groups, students learn how to craft messages and select the appropriate timing, style, and medium for delivery. Participants have the opportunity to design, deliver, and test the impact of new messages.

Credits: 4

Negotiation is approached from a communication perspective in this course. Students explore the cooperative decision-making process in which individuals and groups work together to attempt to achieve goals that may initially seem divergent. By examining the way language is used to frame arguments and barriers, students practice planning, reframing, and bargaining to maintain roles and relationships.

Credits: 2

Students learn how to inform and influence large audiences about noncommercial issues through a series of purposeful communication activities. By examining cases in environment, health, human and animal welfare, and disaster prevention, participants differentiate successful from unsuccessful campaigns and review the process for crafting appropriate mediated messages and selecting specific channels to produce a desired impact.

Credits: 4

Media literacy encompasses the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media. In this course, students learn to critically examine visual, audio, and online media while gaining an understanding of the media’s effect on culture and society.

Credits: 4

The roles and theories of communication and leadership, together with the skills and traits of effective managers, are studied. Students examine how managers use behavioral modification and motivation techniques, develop coaching skills, manage change and conflict, and create a vision for their employees. The topics of strategy, organizational culture, and diversity are also included.

Credits: 4

An examination of the history, cultural impact, and aesthetics of documentary film and video production. Through viewings, lectures, discussions, and hands-on exercises, students learn how to research, write, interview, direct, shoot, and edit a documentary. Using camcorders and editing equipment, students produce their own short documentaries.

Credits: 3

Students learn how to influence others by crafting and orally delivering convincing messages that appeal to logic, reason, emotion, and feelings. Ancient rhetorical and contemporary scholarship is used to examine and compare persuasive speeches and advertisements. The class explores written, face-to-face, and digitally-mediated arguments in legal discourse, health, and marketing promotions. The student’s ability to identify speaking differences in style, arguments, and credibility is also sharpened.

Credits: 4

This course focuses on understanding communication in relationships (interpersonal) and within the mind (intrapsychic: thinking, alone time, analyzing, understanding the external world and how one communicates internally). Topics include communication styles and communication in the intimate relationship, within the family, and at the workplace.

Credits: 4

How do brands communicate during times of crisis? Students will analyze case-studies, leverage best practices and develop their own campaigns to demonstrate how to successfully steer a brand through their most troubling hour. We will touch on key concepts including reputation management, spokesperson training and press conferences, rich and social media, and more in this public relations course.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: COM2050 Or CMS2050

Students will learn different styles of podcasting, best practices for developing and pitching a show, how to use professional audio recorders, basic audio editing techniques with Adobe Audition and how to build an audience and distribute a podcast once it’s complete.

Credits: 3

Students will learn different styles of podcasting, best practices for developing and pitching a show, how to use professional audio recorders, basic audio editing techniques with Adobe Audition and how to build an audience and distribute a podcast once it’s complete.

Credits: 3

Provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the fundamentals needed to build an integrated marketing communications plan, from creating a common objective, aligning strategies, and producing a consistent message. By strategically aligning various marketing functions and leveraging each disciplines strength’s, (i.e. paid advertising, public relations, social media, point of purchase and digital marketing), students can more purposefully design campaigns for maximum impact.

Credits: 3

Knowing how to get work done through meetings is an increasingly important skill set. Students explore the discursive strategies used in a variety of multicultural business meetings, both face-to-face and virtual. Using communication methods, students analyze why some meetings are considered productive and others not so much, as well as the roles, relationships, conflict, and written documentation enacted therein.

Credits: 2

Offers hands-on tools to prepare students to market their work while staying true to their artistic and creative sensibilities. Topics include how to submit work to producers, competitions, and companies. Students learn how to write professional synopses, query letters, and one-sheets, plus the technique of pitching, with practice pitching sessions.

Credits: 2

After reviewing basic presentation skills and techniques, student gain experience handling digital devices to record presentations of themselves and others. Providing hands-on instruction and practice for conducting and recording professional presentations and interviews (still frame and in motion), the course also covers essential production elements: shooting and editing, interviewing and selecting sound bites, and writing and voicing.

Credits: 2

Learn how to write, edit, punch up and perform your own unique standup comedy piece. The course will focus on creating comedic stories, joke construction and performance techniques. An essential part of being successful is learning to give and receive feedback. The class will provide a safe, non-judgmental environment where feedback can be shared and everyone can continuously improve.

Credits: 2

Television is much more than a passive, incessant means of diversion—it is a powerful environment of ideas, emotions, and values that influences people’s thoughts, actions, and relationships. Students become acquainted with current issues concerning television in society and explore the impact of television on society. Aspects examined include the 1950s and mass culture, viewer response, serial/episodic structure, and the rise of cable.

Credits: 4

Hands-on work in the TV studio from conceptualization to post-production. In small groups, students will gain a practical understanding of writing, camera work, editing and working with on-camera personalities. The course will be structured as follows: demonstrating skillful use of equipment, enacting production techniques, and coordinating shooting logistics.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: COM1400 Or FLM1050

Students will work in small groups to produce, shoot and edit Purchase Presents, a television show focused on issues happening on campus.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: COM3750 Or JOU3160

Charles Morazé, in The Triumph of the Middle Classes, describes the political and social history of the bourgeoisie during the 19th century. This course traces themes from Morazé; through the 20th century, with attention to how the middle class sees itself through art, literature, film, advertising, and television.

Credits: 4

The past century saw two world wars and countless smaller, armed conflagrations over land, political influence, and ancient hatreds. This course focuses on a variety of post–World War II conflicts as reported by international journalists. Students learn about the atrocities in Bosnia, the Middle East, and Africa, among others, but most of all, they learn how war and conflict are reported.

Credits: 4

A study of music in its cultural contexts, including how it defines and perpetuates national, cultural, ethnic, and personal identity around the world. The class examines the recording, performing, and broadcasting of music and the role of race, class, and gender in Spain, Central Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Looking through the lens of culture, students see who drives the music industry, who listens, and for what purposes.

Credits: 4

Students explore contemporary literary and cinematic expressions of immigrant groups seeking acceptance in Western cultures. The focus is on issues related to assimilation, identity, and the reactions of the Western mainstream cultures as outside forces compete for recognition. The immigrant groups depicted include those originating in Southeast Asia, China, Africa, and the Middle East.

Credits: 4

A discussion of the constructs, theories, and ideas in the field of social psychology that are most relevant to contemporary society. Films that are rich in examples of social psychological theory are analyzed to facilitate mastery of these concepts.

Credits: 4

The most successful films function as both art and entertainment; students explore why this balance is a rare achievement. Topics include the business origins and aspects of cinema, films that concern and depict artistic process, and a critical/historical evaluation of films as works of art. Film aesthetics are examined from several perspectives, including grammar, genres and forms, and auteur theory.

Credits: 4

This focus on African American cinema includes the work of major African American directors and performers and the films that reflect the complex issues attending the relationship between race and film in the United States.

Credits: 4

Investigates celebrity culture through the lens of advertising and public relations. Particular attention is paid to how celebrity culture is created and shaped by various forms of media, ranging from print to social media platforms. Students consider the ways celebrities create change and consider their impact on public and private lives.

Credits: 3

What does it mean to be part of a subculture? This phenomenon is explored through film, focusing on subcultures that are usually not in the mainstream spotlight and analyzing what it means to live on the margins. The subcultures may include, for example, the Amish, big rig drivers, Scrabble champions, graffiti artists, quadriplegic athletes, prison inmates, and outsider artists.

Credits: 4

Explores the many types of families presented on the silver screen in the 20th century and today: perfect/idyllic families, families threatened by divorce, dysfunctional families, eccentric families, families facing a crisis, and current notions of extended or nontraditional families.

Credits: 4

Throughout the history of cinema, the comedy film has been one of the most financially profitable genres, producing some of the biggest movie stars. Topics include various comedy film styles and performers, and the role of the comedy film genre within the context of world history, especially during darker periods like the Depression and World War II.

Credits: 4

“The city” is examined from some of the perspectives in which it has been depicted in film, beginning with early screen melodramas where the evils of the city are juxtaposed against the virtues of country life. Discussions range from the plight of anonymous individuals struggling for recognition and representations of the “urban jungle” in 1940s film noir to more contemporary perspectives. Filmmakers who incorporate the city as an identifying aspect of their directorial styles are also considered.

Credits: 4

By focusing on masculinities, femininities, and the space in between, this course examines the cultural structure of gender and investigates the various ways that gender is expressed visually in film.

Credits: 4

Examines the elements and messages in sports films that make people cheer for the underdog and care about teams, players, and sports. Using both big-budget Hollywood films and documentaries with a small scope, this course explores the ideas of team, sport, and athletics and investigates the grip that sports have on American culture.

Credits: 4

Introduces various aspects of Chinese culture (e.g., values, customs, manners, and festivals) and discusses everyday life in contemporary Chinese society.

Credits: 3

An intensive focus on the intersection between cinema and history. Students examine the debates around cinema’s status as historical document, surveying different approaches to the relationship between cinematic formal traditions and social history. The course emphasizes the analysis of primary sources, such as reviews, posters, magazine and newspaper articles, personal correspondence, trade publications, and blogs.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Drawing from the rich cinematography of Latin America, this course focuses on the interaction between film and culture in Latin America. Students discuss and analyze films in the context of sociopolitical events and aesthetic movements, with emphasis on the cultural perspective.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: CIN1500 And CIN1510

Historical trauma has characterized the 20th century. Traumatic events return in unexpected forms, haunting communities and shaping both collective memory and mourning practices. Taking a comparative approach across national cinemas, this course analyzes the historical context, style, and narratives of films that circle around the question of trauma. The course covers German, Israeli, Chilean, Japanese, Russian, and American cinemas.

Credits: 4

The ancient world to the beginning of the modern world at 1500 AD: an amalgamation of Celtic, Jewish, Greek, Roman, and German historical traditions.

Credits: 4

A study of texts and events that have shaped Western society and culture since 1500.

Credits: 4

Combines a history of the discovery and excavation of famous archaeological sites worldwide with an introduction to archaeological methodology. Students explore the role that material culture plays in understanding social, political, and economic systems and examine the role of archaeologist as interpreter of the past.

Credits: 3

Spotlights moments when history became the focus of wider social debate, including the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a trial involving Holocaust denier David Irving and an academic historian, and the debates that took place between historians concerning the invasion of Iraq. This course illustrates that, by reflecting on fundamental questions about history—how evidence is used, who has agency in history, how people make moral judgments—citizens are better equipped to confront contemporary political and social issues.

Credits: 4

Examines the history of the United States from European colonization and initial contact with Native Americans through the Civil War. Subjects include the diversity of settlement experiences; European-Native American relations; the development of slavery; the causes and consequences of the American Revolution; social, political, and cultural changes in the 18th and 19th centuries; the sectional crisis; and the significance of the Civil War.

Credits: 3

Examines the history of the United States from Reconstruction through the end of the 20th century. Subjects include changes in race and gender relations; industrialization, urbanization, and suburbanization; the emergence of new social and political movements; the impact of war on American institutions; and America’s rise to world power.

Credits: 3

Students explore objects, behaviors, and ideas to learn about the daily lives and worldviews of three foundational early American cultures: Native American, African American, and European. This course draws heavily on visual and aural materials as well as artifacts to illustrate the ideas and physical realities that shaped early American art and architecture, music, food, landscapes, domestic interiors, family relationships, and pastimes.

Credits: 3

Offers an expansive view of North America’s early history through exploration of the peoples, places and ideas of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and various Caribbean nations. Special emphasis is placed on social history – the lived lives, built environments, cultural collisions, and examples of coexistence among people in an especially-robust phase of human encounter.

Credits: 4

An introductory survey of the history of Latin America from colonial times to the present. Topics include geography, indigenous peoples, colonization and nation formation, society, politics, economy and culture of contemporary Latin America, and its place in today’s world.

Credits: 4

Before the Industrial Revolution, the European Middle Ages enjoyed explosions in urban development, industry, intellectual life, science and technology, and travel. This period witnessed a spike in material consumption that included the things people ingested and their physical environments as well as education and literacy. We will explore these developments and their impact on early modern and modern European society.

Credits: 4

Through lectures, discussion, and the viewing of films, this course compares popular depictions of the Middle Ages with the historical record and modern historiography of the Middle Ages and considers the relationship between fiction and history. Topics include: knighthood, peasants, royalty, religion, warfare and violence and preconceptions about the medieval world that have been inherited from popular culture.

Credits: 4

Topics in history to be determined each semester.

Credits: 3

Explores major social, cultural, economic, and political developments in Latin America from the period following the Wars of Independence to the present. The historical roots of such problems as racism, persistent poverty, and political repression are examined, focusing on “subaltern” groups (e.g., peasants, workers, women, and people of color).

Credits: 4

Explores the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, including those of Egypt, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. Students examine cultural, social, and political movements using texts as well as archaeology as sources.

Credits: 4

Examines how early Jewish interactions with various cultures affected the development of Judaism. Interactions with Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Christian, and Muslim cultures are explored. Topics include conflicts with external powers, exile, and diaspora.

Credits: 4

A survey of the history of Europe in the Middle Ages (1000–1400). Topics include the expansion of the frontiers of European civilization, the changing forms of intellectual and religious life, and the growth of towns and trade.

Credits: 3

An introductory survey of the history of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization of the Americas from 1450 to 1810, i.e., from the late preconquest period to the Latin American struggle for independence. Lectures, readings, and discussions provide an overview of the economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions of colonization.

Credits: 4

Examines the origins of modern Europe from the Renaissance in Italy through the Protestant Reformation and the age of religious wars, using both primary source readings and secondary historical scholarship.

Credits: 3

Focuses on the history of Latinos in urban centers across the U.S. and Latin America. Students explore how Latinos established and maintained distinctive social and cultural identities in the Americas. The historical definition of “Latinidad” is also discussed through the study of colonization, immigration, diaspora, globalization, and the history of the racialization of Latin American descendants.

Credits: 4

Explores the political and social transformation of Europe between the religious wars of the 16th century and the French Revolution. Topics include the growth of commercial capitalism and the scientific revolution.

Credits: 3

The invention of sound recording in the late 1800s caused profound aesthetic transformations in music. This course surveys the many styles that have swept through American music—from parlor songs, ragtime, blues, and brass band through R&B, top 40, heavy metal, rap, and hip-hop—and discusses the roles of rural and urban musical centers. Using the last 125 years of technological innovation in recording, students analyze the more significant cultural changes that continue to reverberate throughout American society.

Credits: 4

Explores migration and immigration from 1830 to the present. Major subjects include Native American removal and genocide, the intersection of migration and slavery, immigration exclusion, and race and the making of illegal immigration. Students examine long patterns of U.S. legislative policies alongside on-the-ground experiences and reactions to migration and immigration. The course concludes with an analysis of immigration in the post-9/11 era.

Credits: 4

Covers European institutions, traditions, economies, geopolitical boundaries, and the essential social and intellectual framework of the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. Critical changes and events covered include the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, Napoleon, the revolutions of 1848, romanticism, nationalism, and communism. Readings consist of extensive primary source materials in addition to secondary works.

Credits: 4

Focuses on the prehistory of the Americas from the first peoples through 1492, beginning with the Ice Age cultures of the New World and moving forward chronologically. South, Central, and North American cultures are examined, including the Olmec, Woodlands, and Mississippi Valley cultures, pueblo culture, and the Maya, Aztec, and Inca.

Credits: 4

Explores the encounters and interactions of the major populations who lived on the landmasses rimming the Atlantic Ocean (native peoples, Africans, and Europeans) from 1450 to 1888. Topics include migration, religion, slaves and enslavement, lived lives and material culture, foodways and folkways, the age of revolutions, and the fight for abolition.

Credits: 4

How are we to understand the century that has just ended? This course examines the political, social, and ideological forces that have shaped Europe since World War I. Special attention is paid to the impact of war and revolution, economic change, the Nazi dictatorship, the Cold War and its demise, and the changing role of Europe in world affairs.

Credits: 3

In this examination of the turbulent decade of the 1960s, students explore key social, political, economic, and cultural issues of the era. Specific topics include various struggles for civil rights and social equality; the escalation of the U.S. presence in Vietnam; the sexual revolution; the vision and limitations of the Great Society; and the rise of the New Right.

Credits: 4

Covers the experience of American women from colonial times to the 20th century, from political, social, religious, cultural, and economic points of view.

Credits: 4

Covers the history of Brazil from independence to the present. During this period, Brazil has transformed from a colonial, agrarian, slave society to a predominantly urban, industrialized nation and an aspiring world power. Students explore slavery, racism, urban life, immigration and industrialization, changing gender roles, political repression and military rule, carnaval and popular culture.

Credits: 4

An introduction to modern Japanese history, from the end of the Tokugawa period in the mid-19th century to the present. Japanese imperialism, Japan’s spectacular economic growth after World War II, and U.S.-Japanese relations are discussed.

Credits: 4

Explores African civilizations from the ninth millennium BCE to the 16th century CE. The diverse regions of ancient Africa are studied using archaeology, written and oral history, linguistics, art, and science, following cultural development in simple societies, states, and empires. Ancient Africa is presented in global context in terms of past civilizations but also in modern scholarship, identity, and popular media.

Credits: 4

Covers the history and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Topics include Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period, Etruscan civilization, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, Roman interactions with neighbors, the birth of Christianity, and the early years of the Byzantine Empire. This course also addresses how to read primary sources, the historiography of antiquity, and how to use archaeological sources.

Credits: 4

How was the Holocaust possible in the 20th century? This course responds to the question by examining specific issues: German anti-Semitism; Hitler’s rise to power; the genocide process; responses to Nazism and the news of the Holocaust in Jewish and international communities; resistance and collaboration; and theological and moral questions.

Credits: 4

A survey of Chinese arts and culture that introduces approaches to and connoisseurship of painting, calligraphy, sculpture, gardens, and architecture in dynamic relation to dynastic changes, literati-scholar tradition, cosmological and aesthetic concepts, and influences of Taoism and Buddhism during the period 221 BC to 1950. Knowledge of Chinese language is not required or expected.

Credits: 3