This course will introduce students to the legal regime in the United States in which citizens and activists work to protect public health and the environment. How does the law help protect us and our environment? What are its shortfalls? Who are the stakeholders in this system? What can you do to make change happen?

This course is an introduction to the politics of heritage. Heritage sites, monuments and museums are frequently sites of controversy, as various groups with different and often conflicting experiences contest interpretations of the past. This seminar adopts a global approach to heritage. We will focus on the major themes, ideas and debates shaping the theoretical and methodological frameworks for studying heritage. We will learn the ways in which colonialism and nationalism impact heritage in the past.

Our educational present is partially defined by the rise of hip hop-based education (HHBE) as a theory, method, and practice for re-engaging young people with school-based learning and shaping the next generation of activists and intellectuals, especially in urban schools with Black and Latino youth. However, there is clear lack of consensus on the purposes and efficacy of HHBE.

This course is designed as a seminar in mass culture & media/cultural studies, and is appropriate for advanced Division II and Division III students. Topics to be addressed include historical efforts to theorize mass culture, the relationship between the mass and the popular, and questions of value, ideology, cultural production, representation and consumption. Readings will be drawn from the work of Adorno & Horkheimer, Benjamin, Kracauer, Macdonald, Althusser, de Certeau, and Hall, as well as recent critical writings in media and cultural studies.

This course will focus on a wide range of topics in sound synthesis and music composition using the MAX/MSP/JITTER program. Students will undertake projects in interactive MIDI composition, algorithmic composition, additive and subtractive synthesis, waveshaping, AM/FM synthesis, and sampling. Other topics to be covered include SYSEX programming, sound analysis, theories of timbre, and concepts of musical time. Prerequisite is HACU290 Computer Music 1 or equivalent course. Instructor Permission required.

This course will engage the important compositional practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Students will compose music using post-tonal pitch systems, new scalar and chordal constructions, and expanded formal and textural possibilities. We will focus on the creation of new, non-traditional hierarchies within musical systems with regard to intervals, notions of consonance and dissonance, asymmetrical meters, non-metrical rhythm, and tuning.

This is an advanced architectural studio class for Division III and other students with a design background, both in terms of familiarity with architectural representation and principles of architectural design. Throughout this course students develop individual design projects they propose. Their work is assessed every week through desk reviews and pin-up critiques. A considerable amount of self-directed work outside of class hours is expected from students. This course is limited to Division III students and senior thesis students.

This course will provide an opportunity for Division II students in film, video, photography and related media who wish to pursue their own work to create at least one completed new project for inclusion in the Division II portfolio. We will examine approaches to developing, creating and realizing new works. Each student will be required to present their work to the group several times during the semester. The members of the class will provide critical, technical and production support for one another. Practical workshops will be offered where necessary.

Music Composition from the Jazz Continuum: From Jelly Roll Morton to Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams to Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus to Ornette Coleman, jazz composers have brought great innovation to the musical culture of their times. We will look at the way composers up to the present day engage with the blues sensibility and improvisational forms within their compositional approaches. This course aims to expand our skills with musical form, language, and medium.

This is a hybrid studio-seminar course for students in the studio arts and photography. The course will critically engage with many prevalent themes shared among contemporary visual arts of all disciplines. Weekly student presentations and adaptive critiques will take place alongside reading discussions, screenings, and artist presentations and at least one field trip. Students will develop their art-making/photography-making practice in dialogue with expanded contemporary art practices.