This course introduces students to a range of somatic therapy practices and their application toward healing and justice work. This will occur within legacies of African-rooted dance and performance that we witness being expressed in a traditional community practice throughout the continent and within the Diaspora.

Designed for dance students, this course is an experiential study of the human body's musculoskeletal system. The structure of this course includes lectures, movement laboratory sessions, somatic exercises, and developing a personal warmup for full-bodied dancing. Anatomical understanding becomes a springboard for clearer movement choices and deeper engagement in dance practice.

The primary goal of this course is to provide strategies for each student to develop an individual studio art practice. Through experimentation, thematic development, strong sketchbook skills, and research, students will begin the process of developing and articulating a conceptual focus in their own art production.  Students will be asked to draw on technical skills acquired in 200-level medium-specific courses to create independently generated projects.  Simultaneously, students will be required to reflect clearly upon their work in short writing assignments towards the creation of a coheren

This course will focus on visual storytelling and will explore how artists have communicated narrative in a multitude of ways throughout history.  The creative assignments will be divided into thematic units including: Myths and Fairytales, Superheroes, Familial Relationships, and Historical Narratives.  Students will be free to tackle these assignments in any medium they feel most appropriately reflects their ideas.

Through a studio-based, interdisciplinary approach, this course explores diverse methods and practices within contemporary painting. We will discuss both traditional and experimental definitions of painting and exercise connections between painting and other disciplines, including performance and sculpture. Topics include painting as a byproduct of movement, unconventional materials in abstraction, and creative responses to current events.

What does it mean to be an artist in a time of global environmental crisis? How can art connect social, racial, and environmental justice frameworks? How can art foster a sense of kinship between humans, land, water, and non-human organisms? In this class, we'll conduct interdisciplinary, project-based inquiry exploring themes of place, materiality, reciprocity, and advocacy, as they relate to environmental concerns. Students will create independent artworks in conversation with the class community and instructor.

This class is designed to give the beginning student an overview of basic printmaking techniques and an understanding of what a print is, its form in both unique and multiple formats, and how these techniques function in our culture. The focus of this course will be on developing methods students can take with them when they graduate, whether or not they have access to a traditional studio space and equipment, using nontoxic, water-based materials.

Nagel states, "Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless." Chalmers calls consciousness "the hard problem." Explaining consciousness raises significant challenges for philosophers and cognitive scientists alike, and understanding the nature of the problem is half the battle. This class will explore contemporary philosophical approaches to consciousness, and draw in psychology and neuroscience perspectives. Topics may also include split-brain problems, the nature of dreaming, and altered states.

This is a research seminar, designed to introduce students to classic and recent debates on the "history of capitalism" and to support original research on a broad array of topics related to the social and cultural history of economic life. Rather than take British capitalism as exemplary of modernization we will situate that which was particular about the British case against the pluralities of capitalism that have evolved over the past three centuries.

As U.S. racial group populations are on the rise, educational institutions need to prepare for racial diversity reflected in classrooms from elementary school to college. In this lab course, students will use qualitative research methods and social justice frameworks to code and analyze three distinct data sets, one collected from Puerto Rican parents in Holyoke; one from a college course on social justice; and one from pre-service teachers in public schools.