This course introduces the basic principles and techniques of painting. Students will learn to use a variety of painting tools, to accurately see and mix colors, to analyze surface qualities, and to prepare supports. Working primarily from direct observation, they will strive to articulate form, to capture spatial relationships, to create purposeful compositions, and to make meaningful images. Subjects will include still life, figure, interiors, and the landscape.

This course will explore how to integrate digital processes with traditional printmaking techniques. Students will learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and develop and create imagery through those programs. They will then use digital devices such as laser cutter, router and plotter to turn a digital file into a physical printing block. The final art form will be hand-printed work, utilizing relief printing, engraving on wood, collographs, and monoprinting. This course also covers print-based digital animation.

This hands-on interdisciplinary introduction to the tools and practices of 2D, 3D, and 4D art will include drawing, object making, and time-based exploration. Studio work is grounded in an embodied approach to process, and explores the relationship between perception and cognition. The course culminates with a final project which links conceptual exploration and personal expression to formal skill-building. Studio assignments will be supplemented with critiques, discussion, and collaboration, as well as study of relevant contemporary and historical artists.

This intensive drawing course will challenge students' assumptions about the world around them. The course will begin from the beginning, using an embodied connection to the tools of drawing to explore foundational elements of space, line, plane, surface, and tone. This course is grounded in hands-on methods where students will work with a variety of drawing media to tap into both the analytic and expressive capacities of the medium.

This intensive drawing course will challenge students' assumptions about the world around them. The course will begin from the beginning, using an embodied connection to the tools of drawing to explore foundational elements of space, line, plane, surface, and tone. This course is grounded in hands-on methods where students will work with a variety of drawing media to tap into both the analytic and expressive capacities of the medium.

The concept of the Anthropocene (the "human epoch") signifies that human activity has become the dominant physical force on the planet. Mainstream narratives envision three phases of the Anthropocene: industrial origins (1800 - 1950); global expansion and the nuclear age (1950 - 2000+); and an emergent third phase marked by massive shifts in land-use and biodiversity. This course undertakes a critical examination of the Anthropocene concept.

In this course, we will explore the different facets of numerous environmental policy issues and review the substantive aspects, legal themes, and regulatory structure of the major federal environmental laws. The laws covered in this course include the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and others.

Mount Holyoke has recognized our role in global resource use and has a strong sustainability mission, with the goal to become carbon neutral by 2037. This course is a project-based experiential learning course that will use the Mount Holyoke campus as a case study to find solutions. Entrepreneurial teams will identify environmental hotspots on campus through use of existing datasets as well as collect additional needed data.

This course will explore the historical, political, economic, social, and cultural contexts in which human-environment interactions occur. We will cover critical topics and trends in the field of political ecology, from its early manifestations to more recent expansions. Using case studies from the global south and north, we will discuss factors that shape social and environmental change across scales from the personal to the global, and we will examine the role of gender, race, class, and power in struggles over resources.