This course is for students with the solid knowledge of Western music fundamentals including the proficiency with staff notation, intervals and chords identification as well as basic melodic and rhythmic sight-reading skills. After a quick review, we first explore functions of melodic and harmonic intervals in species counterpoint. The class then proceeds to the study of four-part diatonic harmony and voice-leading techniques. In this section, we also begin to learn relationships between cadences and forms and compose a four-voice chorale using a binary form for a midterm project.

The last few years have seen an explosion of renewed interest in the artistic and narrative possibilities of this form. As technology has changed and allowed for the growth of small press/DIY publishing, so too has the definition of what a "book" is. In this class, we will explore the history of photobooks. Students will create their own "books" - hand-produced or printed on demand, physical or conceptual - and will learn strategies which will help translate the photograph into a variety of formats, ranging from zines to full monographs to installations and exhibitions.

This course is designed for students interested in merging social activism, performing arts and teaching. It teaches students to use movement arts and literary arts in settings such as senior centers, residential treatment centers for incarcerated youth, and youth recreation centers. In studio sessions, students will learn how to construct classes and dance and movement exchanges or events for community sites.

Moby-Dick, that hard-to-classify novel about Captain Ahab's mad search for the White Whale, took its own long voyage to arrive at a position in the canon of U.S. literature. Poorly received when it was published in 1851, Herman Melville's novel did not begin to gain its current status until the early 20th century. This course will follow Moby-Dick's voyage(s): we will begin with an intensive reading of the novel itself and explore its 19th century contexts.

This course is going to explore the limits of painting. Students will create work within the ambiguous space between painting and installation art. Investigating the expressive potential alternative materials provide, students are going to advance their own relationship to composition, mark making and surface by integrating two dimensional and three dimensional decision-making within their own working practice.

This course examines contemporary Japanese popular culture as a way of understanding cultural dimensions of globalization and its complex operation, which transcends traditional national boundaries. Narrowly defined, J-Pop refers to a genre of music that has dominated Japan's music scene since the early 1990s. In this course we extend our investigation to include various other media, forms, and expressions of popular culture related to our interest, e.g., manga, anime, films, computer games, and distinctive fashions.

Are we becoming "posthuman"? Can we be certain that the versions of humanity that have existed until now will continue to exist in the future, given our ability to control our own evolution and to create intelligent machines? Can we still uphold a boundary between biological organism and cybernetic mechanism? How have posthuman conceptions provided inspiration for black liberation, feminist politics, and gender hacking? We will begin by discussing philosophical and biological conceptions of the human and the boundaries between humans, animals, machines, and other entities.

This course will explore the social and historical context for Irish traditional music performance in Ireland, in diaspora, and as a tradition in the Pioneer Valley. We will also study Irish popular music from the perspectives of post-colonialism, Irish nationalism, and political/economic change in Ireland during the 20th and 21st centuries. There will be regular writing and reading assignments (both primary and secondary sources). We will spend roughly 25% of class time learning Irish traditional music and/or song by ear.

Bridging Shakespeare to the twenty-first century, this course explores different forms of personal and communal trauma, and the ways that writing offers a means to redemption. By analyzing a range of novels, poetry, plays, and films, we will consider the different ways that trauma has been turned into narrative and how narrative in turn seeks to transform trauma into something else. Readings will be approached from a historical/literary perspective, and will include narrative paths that lead to healing and redemption, but also to resistance and revenge.

This course provides an opportunity for students to discover what research practice can look like for those working in film, photography, video installation, and related media. Readings, screenings, creative exercises, library workshops and artist talks which address conceptual approaches, working methods, and a range of research strategies will allow students to deepen their research skills as they develop projects of their own.