This film production/theory course will address cinematic representations of the body in relation to the architecture and space of cities including Mexico City, London, Dakar, Los Angeles, Tokyo, San Francisco and Paris. We will consider the determining roles of the camera and the body within films that center on the performance of shifts in cultural identities, emphasizing the body as the primary site of negotiation of identity. We will question how cinematic languages function as aesthetic systems that reflect the ways in which the body is coded in terms of gender, race and class.

This seminar examines the art, architecture and design produced in Europe and the U.S. after World War II and the Holocaust, investigating artistic expressions of rubble and rupture in the context of a traumatized humanity and a ruined landscape.

What difference does it make -- to the reader, to the author, to the text itself -- that a text is written by a woman? Women writers over history have defied cultural prohibitions to break into public voice. In so doing, they have questioned, deformed, and reformed literary genres and cultural institutions, transgressing cultural expectations and producing literature of exceptional ingenuity and creativity.

In this course, we will learn the basics of producing music pieces for public radio. We will first learn the basics of radio journalism, including reporting, recording, scriptwriting, production, and the effective use of music and ambient sound. Students will then produce three music-related pieces, including a vox pop, CD review, and a documentary feature in a style consistent with public radio. Students will also gain a working knowledge of sound editing techniques using ProTools software.

Is beauty useless, or does art serve a (moral) purpose? The role of art in Western culture has often been under debate, especially with the rise of literacy, accessibility, and democratization that came in the period of industrialization. These questions are particularly pertinent now in the ongoing debate over liberal arts education and the future of the humanities. This course will combine readings in aesthetic philosophy with literary works to investigate the way art figures in a society of consumption.

The moral legitimacy of war has been the focus of intense division and debate within Christianity from its emergence in the first century of the Common Era. Crucial for the ensuing centuries of warfare in the West, Christian theologians, philosophers, and eventually canon lawyers have been the source of the doctrine of just war in its first formulations and in its many versions since, down to the present day. This course will trace the roots and the path of that tradition in the West.

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.

How does the human perception of sound influence our relationships with our environments? How does sound contribute to "sense of place"? What roles do digital technologies play in forming and manipulating sonic experience? What concepts and practices do we engage to structure sonic environments--real, or imagined--or to deconstruct them? This cross-disciplinary exploration combines ethnography, experimental measurement, and subjective testing with textual/media research.

Investigating works of literature, art, architecture, sound, performance and film, alongside selected texts in philosophy and critical theory, this class will probe the enduring question: "What is Art?" We will debate concepts such as authenticity, appropriation, imitation, forgery, and dissidence. Is art the product of the gifted intellect, instinct and talent, or of practice and tradition? Or, does the creative process require radical thinking and an avant-garde? Is art intentional, or can it be found in the everyday or even the natural world?

This course will examine the ways that 20th-century philosophers and theorists have approached the art of their time, and the ways that modern and contemporary art illuminate and ground philosophical thought. Via writings by philosophers, theorists, critics, and artists, we will traverse a selected history of 20th-century art guided by a selected history of 20th-century philosophy and art theory.