"Nowadays it is fashionable to talk about race or gender; the uncool subject is class. It's the subject that makes us all tense, nervous, uncertain about where we stand." bell hooks Money and class divides define and splinter our national dialogue. How are these divides lived, embodied, and voiced? And how can the act of embodying one another's stories help us envision more equitable, common ground? Money Play is a two-semester course; students can take either semester, or both.

There are processes designers in the theatre must undertake to realize the physical world of a play. Within the performing arts no single aspect of design exists in isolation and no designer should fly solo. Moving through a series of individual and group exercises, students will begin to develop their own process toward expressing the passion of a theatre work through their designs. Throughout the semester students will develop a design vocabulary that allows for collaboration and interplay, while producing unified and coherent design work.

What is presence on stage? And how does an actor manifest it? This course examines the work of the actor through a hands-on, experiential approach, focusing on the body, voice, and imagination. The course begins with an exploration of the body, and how one's physical form can be both a text and a jumping off point to create visual poetry on stage. We will then move to naturalistic scenes as a way to develop tools of text analysis, character development, and receiving and sending action.

The U.S.-Mexico border has been described as a "thin edge of barbwire...where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds." Nowhere else in the world is there such physical proximity of a post-industrial nation and a developing one. While capital, goods and managerial personnel freely cross the border under NAFTA, the Mexican worker is the target of conflicting policies aimed at securitizing the border and disciplining labor on both sides.

This course will explore the history, ideas, voices and strategies African Americans employed in the struggle to secure rights and demand respect in the United States in the 1960s and 70s. This includes an exploration into the relationship between politics and the arts; the articulation of a black aesthetic; black performance politics; radical imaginaries, and print culture through the seminal theorists, artists, and activists of the period.

During the Great Depression, misery was visible. People lined up for soup, furniture of recently evicted tenants cluttered the streets and unemployed workers rode the rails. Today, poverty seems to be less visible. We hear about foreclosures and evictions through statistical rundowns on the nightly news, but are rarely confronted with images. When we compare the Great Depression and the current recession, many questions emerge. Why did people take to the streets during the Great Depression?

This course will familiarize students with histories of African enslavement throughout the Americas. We will explore critical aspects of the roots and routes of enslavement and consider displacement, dislocation, dehumanization, and resilience of African peoples in the New World. This course, designed for first and second-year students, yet suitable for third and fourth-year students with an interest in diaspora studies, will pursue several questions: What is the world that slavery made? What strategies of survival did enslaved people employ?

Introduction to Queer Studies explores the emergence and development of the field of queer studies since the 1990s. In order to do so, the course examines the relationship between queer studies and fields like postcolonial studies, gay and lesbian studies, transgender studies, disability studies, and critical race studies. Students will come away with a broad understanding of the field, particularly foundational debates, key words, theories, and concepts. As part of their research, students will explore alternative genealogies of queer studies that exceed the academy.

This course will explore the work of scholars, essayists, and creative writers in order to use their prose as models for our own. We'll analyze scholarly explication and argument, and we'll appreciate the artistry in our finest personal essays and short fiction. Students will complete a series of critical essays in the humanities and natural sciences and follow with a personal essay and a piece of short fiction. Students will have an opportunity to submit their work for peer review and discussion; students will also meet individually with the instructors.