This course is for all who stay to the end of the credits, purchase soundtracks, and argue over who should have won the Oscar for Best Score, along with anyone else interested in the undervalued importance of music to the general effect of a motion picture. We will explore and discuss the myriad ways in which these two media interact. The course will focus on classic scores by Herrmann, Morricone, and Williams, as well as the uses of pre-existing music in films of Kubrick and Tarantino.

A survey of world performance history, including: the evolution of human language and consciousness; the rise of oral, ritual, and shamanic performance; religious and civic festivals; and imperial theater practices that position the stage at the dangerous intersection of religious worship, public taste, royal patronage, and government censure. Understanding performance as both artistic practice and social institution, this course emphasizes the role performance has played in changing audiences and as a cultural and political force in various societies.

Yue Opera, an all-female art that flourished in Shanghai in 1923, resulted from China's social changes and the women's movement. Combining traditional with modern forms and Chinese with Western cultures, Yue Opera today attracts loyal and enthusiastic audiences despite pop arts crazes. We will focus on how audiences, particularly women, are fascinated by gender renegotiations as well as by the all-female cast. The class will read and watch classics of this theater, including Romance of the Western Bower, Peony Pavilion, and Butterfly Lovers.

This course offers a broad introduction to the history, politics and aesthetics of Latin American cinema through some of its most influential films. We address the revolutionary styles of agit-prop, Neo-Realism and Third Cinema, as well as Hollywood-style melodrama. The course also familiarizes students with the basic terminology, concepts and approaches of film studies.

An examination of the gothic -- a world of fear, haunting, claustrophobia, paranoia, and monstrosity -- in U.S. literature and visual culture. Topics include race, slavery, and the gothic; gender, sexuality, and the gothic; regional gothic; the uncanny; cinematic and pictorial gothic; pandemic gothic. Authors, artists, and filmmakers may include Dunbar, Elmer, Faulkner, Gilman, Hitchcock, Jackson, Kubrick, LaValle, Lovecraft, McCullers, Morrison, O'Connor, Parks, Peele, Poe, Polanski, Romero, and Wood.

This course will examine the materials and techniques used in building and operating theatrical scenery. It will include prop building, rigging, and welding for the theater. Students will learn the skills to work in the scene shop interpreting scenic designs for department productions.

This course offers the student a study and practice of theater as a collaborative art. Course includes the analysis of the dramatic text in terms of the actor; the director; the scenic, costume, lighting, and sound designers; and technicians. Close analytical readings of play texts and critical/theoretical essays will be supplemented by attending theater productions both on and off campus and by staging students' own theatrical projects.

This course is an introduction to critical topics in design and planning as a medium for envisioning the social, cultural, and ecological life of regions, cities and landscapes through the thoughts and works of local, national and international academic and professional leaders. Themes articulate climate change resiliency, social equity, urban design, arts, landscape aesthetics and cultural heritage. Course format is attending the Department's Zube Lecture Series and submission of reflective papers on presented topics.