Is music raced? How do musical sound, image, performance, and even performer become racialized? How does music speak to, reflect, reproduce, reinforce, and/or contest race and racism? How do individuals use music to express their ethnic/racial identity? Such questions hint at the undeniable yet ineffable influence of race on the American musical imagination. This seminar will consider the fraught intersection of race, power, and desire in contemporary popular music (hip hop, electronic dance music, rock, pop, punk, R&B/soul, world music, etc.).

Seven countries, seven films, seven filmmakers, one continent; Africa. The films will be our main text. We will read and analyze them. Most of the films deal with contemporary themes of post-colonial urban life but some like Mother's Day from Tsitsi Dangaremba are inspired by ancient myths. We will address the historical and political contexts in which the films were made. Finally we will look at the cinepolitical situation, the financing and distribution structures, as they pertain to the specific films. Like this we will win an introduction to Contemporary Africa Cinema.

Learn to make books that pop up, transform, unfold, expand, books that become theaters, movable structures or interactive experiences: movable books. Treat form and content as an interdependent whole as you create your own movable artists books. With the emergence of e-books we can't help but ask ourselves whether there will remain a place for physical books in our future or if they will one day disappear altogether. In this studio we'll explore various 3D book forms and structures, which can't readily be translated into digital format.

Embellishing upon Ralph Ellison's astute remark that much in American life is "jazz shaped," this course examines the influence of black musical traditions on American dance concert dance. We will focus on the relationship between jazz music and dance, looking at how jazz rhythm, improvisation, call-and-response patterning and elements of swing altered the line, attack, speed, weight, and phrasing of contemporary dance forms.

Along with his compatriot J.L. Borges, Julio Cortazar's writings altered contemporary literature. His fictions are relentlessly self-reflexive: they problematize the representation of reality through various linguistic and stylistic devices, which the course will study in detail. By reconstructing the literary traditions, cultural situations and historical moments in which his texts were produced and circulated we will also ascertain his impact.

This "comprovisation" course will look to the inspiration of the poetic for our creative work. What a huge subject! Here are our limitations. We will do a series of composition assignments where we each set the same poetic text, but with diverse musical languages. We will be studying how masterful composer/improvisers, from Franz Schubert to Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell to George Crumb, and many more, have set and interacted with words. We will work on the technical challenges and possibilities of writing for the voice.

This course will emphasize the art of producing nonfiction audio stories - including documentaries and more lyrical sound pieces for radio or podcast. Beginning and advanced students are welcome. Over the semester, each student will produce three broadcast-quality audio works, all of which will be aired on Hampshire's radio station and possibly other outlets.

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 SATB 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.

Ghosts, vampires, madwomen, and typists: what do these figures have in common? In this course, we will investigate the characters and events that made the Victorian period the age of sensation, from the rise of popular fiction and the illustrated newspaper to the introduction of new methods for viewing and experiencing the world on a global scale. The course will focus on nineteenth-century Britain, exploring the ways in which Victorian fiction, poetry, print and visual media give voice to the period's obsession with sensory experience.

In this course I will introduce students to the practice of screenwriting. We will begin by examining the classical three and five act structures in the various traditional fiction genres. We will develop character, dialogue, story arc etc. However, we will go further and experiment with alternatives to narrative structures. We will create styles of "writing" with images and music that break the conventional standard of what Peter Watkins refers to as the "monoform".