Intro to Neuroscience
This comprehensive survey course explores the brain and the biological basis of behavior. We will examine the anatomy of the nervous system and the unique properties of the cells that make up the brain. We will discuss the mechanisms by which individual brain cells communicate with each other, and how small networks of cells underlie more complex processes such as perception, learning, and behavior. In labs, students will perform experiments that expand upon and reinforce these ideas through hands-on exercises.
Reading, Pleasures, #Black Joy
What is #blackjoy? This course assumes that it's more than a hashtag. It examines the varied meaning of joy (and also the absence of joy) in contemporary African American literature. We will engage in a discussion about joy and pleasure by way of literature-as it is broadly defined-that will press against our understandings of race, blackness, affect, and selfhood while also asking questions about how these understandings impact communities.
What is African American Lit?
We will examine the very meaning of African-American literature by reading a variety of major (and not so major) writers from the revolutionary era to the present. We will explore the idea of the African-American experience(s) of citizenship, race, sexuality, gender, class, and privilege. Instead of focusing upon the ways in which this literature emerges within history, we will address (across time) the various ways in which writers, orators, poets, rappers, and authors tackle these themes within literary forms: fiction, creative non-fiction, autobiography, poems, songs, etc.
Dance Technique 3: HALF COURSE
A half course, this intermediate level modern/contemporary dance technique course will be a laboratory exploring the movement capacities of the human body as selected for aesthetic and expressive purposes. Students will investigate expression in movement by working with sensation, space, time, focus and attention to detail. They'll deepen their knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics to increase movement efficiency and safety, and they'll work to expand their rhythmic and dynamic range in longer and more complex movement phrases. This is considered a half course.
Dancing Modern I
An Introduction to Moving and Making in Context: Dancing Modern 1 is a beginning level modern dance course, which will introduce students to "modern" and "contemporary" dance practices. Establishing the studio as a laboratory, students will be invited to embody a wide variety of movement sequences designed to bring attention to the body's capacity for articulation, spatial awareness, musicality, interpretation and personal expression.
Elementary Chinese I
Elementary Chinese I: This course will be taught by a visiting teacher of Chinese from the Hampshire College China Exchange program and supervised by Professor Kay Johnson. It will cover the first semester of beginning Chinese. The second semester of beginning Chinese language will be offered during the spring semester. The course will follow the Integrated Chinese textbook series. The class will cover speaking, reading, and writing Chinese characters.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the investigation, at the most fundamental level, of the nature of reality. It has been an especially vibrant area of philosophy in recent years, and we will read some of the freshest and most important work in the field. Among the questions to be considered are: What is existence? Is there more than one kind of existence? Are there merely possible things? Could you have been a poached egg (Tichy)? What is possibility anyway? Can things really change, or do they last for no more than a moment, or both? When are several things parts of some greater whole, and why?
ST-Navigating New York Theater
This course is designed to create an individual check list for every theater maker exploring the possibility of a move to New York. "Navigating New York Theater" will help inform future New Yorkers on the ins and outs of getting started, from finding a place to live and work to, most importantly, connecting to a theater community. This course includes a trip to New York.