This semester, our ensemble course will jump into the wide road of the African-American music continuum at the whistle stops commonly called Funk and Rhythm and Blues. As musical artists, we will look to meet its rigorous standards of performance practice. From there, we will look at the connections, the ways this philosophy of the groove has informed so much spiritual, political, and cultural creativity in America and across the world. This ensemble course includes weekly practice, individual and in groups, as well as readings and written assignments.

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf observed, "[The woman] born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself." What professional and personal challenges have female poets faced throughout history? How have women reconciled societal expectations of 'proper femininity' with the desire to write and publish? How has the marketplace influenced the development of poetry by women? How does the study of gender difference influence the process of reading and analyzing poems?

The task of this course will be to develop portfolio of translations connected to the discussions about specifics of the poetry translation, both in theory and in practice. Students should be curious (but, obviously not masterful) about poetry and literary translation and willing to experiment with stretching the limits of their linguistic and creative possibilities.

Modern-Contemporary Dance Technique 3 is an intermediate-level class, which will build on students' previous study of modern dance technique. The studio will be our laboratory for a semester-long exploration of a wide range of modern dance concepts with a focus on deepening sensation, clarifying points of initiation in the body, expansive use of space, connectivity and increasingly complex phrase work. Along the way we will give continued attention to alignment, spatial clarity, breath, increasing range of motion and the development of strength and stamina.

Graphic design is a creative and critical practice at the intersection of communication and abstraction. The process of learning graphic design is two-fold, and students in this course will engage both areas: first, students will develop knowledge and fluency with design skills--in this case, software (Photoshop/Illustrator); second students will address the challenges of design head-on through discussion, practice, iteration, critique and experimentation.

Dance Pioneer Barbara Mettler said, "To create means to make up something new." In this course students explore the elements of dance through a series of creative problems solved in improvisations by individuals and groups. Directed exercises are used to heighten awareness of the body and its movement potential. Studies using the sounds of voice, hands and feet develop skills in accompaniment. Based on the principle that dance is a human need this work invites people of all ages and abilities to come together in movement and to make dance an element of their lives.

In this performance-based introductory class, students will begin to develop the skills and techniques of jazz performance, including ensemble playing and improvisation. Students will study the forms and concepts of jazz composition and theory and apply them in the composition and performance of repertoire. They will learn to compose elements of jazz pieces and will present their original work in a spring concert performance. There will be assigned readings and a short, final paper.

Working with contemporary feminist approaches to questions of difference, this course asks what place we should give experiences that seem quite central to everyday cultural life: those of the mysterious, the playful, the funny, the useless, the intimate, and the indifferent. How do these experiences mesh with meanings put into play by language, the senses, performances, critical reason, and the market? How do they link up with alternative kinds of pleasure and desire? What other concepts should we add to the list?

This course is a foundational art-making course, an update of a traditional optical color theory course or section in 2D foundations. In addition to the basics of color theory, we will consider the cultural and conceptual meanings of specific colors, and other seemingly neutral design elements such as stripes and patterns. Instead of approaching these subjects from a formal angle of relations, we will investigate how colors can be approached on the level of psychology, anthropology, literature, history, and art history. Projects will consist of physical and conceptual color theory exercises.

Every culture bears unique sensibilities to sounds. People cultivate distinctive ways of hearing, understanding, and relating to them. These sensibilities are also reflected in the processes of sound- and music-making. Different instruments are devised to encapsulate distinctive cultural values not only acoustically but also visually in their material forms. This course aims to explore diverse music cultures of the world through the lens of organology (the study of musical instruments).