This course will integrate advanced level drawing assignments with two student defined half semester long independent projects. Readings, slide talks, field trips to nearby drawing sites, and independent research will provide a context for the development of two cohesive bodies of independent work. Drawing as a visual practice will be defined broadly to allow for the exploration of forms and imagery across multiple genres, media and dimensions. Group critiques will provide a critical environment and offer a forum for the discussion of contemporary issues in drawing.

This 300 level course focuses on the actor's craft. We will identify clear and compelling character objectives and obstacles based upon an analysis of scripted and imagined biographies, develop dynamic behavior through sense memory, keen observation and broad physicalization, and cultivate a facility for the critical analysis of dramatic literature. Additionally, each actor will script (at least) one original monologue or scene, and perform contemporary American scenes in one public performance. Instructor permission only.

In this course students will focus on four plays (two contemporary and two classics) for in-depth design investigations. Within a studio setting students will devise specific projects that address scenic, costume, lighting, projection or sound design issues. These projects may consist of, but not be limited to costume design renderings, scenic design models, light plots with cues, or sound plots with cues. Formal presentations are expected. Students will also be required to produce a complete design in the area of their choice for an intensive in-class critique.

What is feminism today, and how is it relevant for theatre and performance work? This class will serve as an introduction to the work of 20th and 21st century women playwrights, performance artists, and critical thinkers. We will confront feminism as a tool for reading and interpreting issues of gender and sexuality in plays and performances. We will also consider how, and to what extent, feminism influences practices of writing, performing, and spectatorship. Students will be expected to attend performances, read and write critically and perform their discoveries.

"Wicked Problems" are complex, ever changing, and resistant to simple solutions; they require transformative and purposeful innovation. Social entrepreneurs are faced with the challenge of developing ideas that embrace and are shaped by this complexity, ideas that engage communities, cross disciplines and have the potential to disrupt and transform systems. What do social entrepreneurs need to understand about the people who are impacted by their entrepreneurial actions?

In this workshop, designed for advanced students of poetry, workshop members will write and design a chapbook of 20-30 pages; at least 15 pages of this work will be 'new writing' completed in the course of the semester. The collection/chapbook produced can reflect mixed mediums, collaboration, and hybrid forms. Workshop members are expected to submit work for peer feedback and to respond to peer work in the course of the semester. Each workshop member will study and respond to collections of published poems, with an emphasis on 'first book' and small press publications.

This is a research course for intellectuals who are artists and artists who are intellectuals. The course has two goals. (First) To understand the Nineteen Twenties in America as an era whose excesses and preoccupations were nothing but a dance of death performed at the edge of a mass grave containing the bodies of seven million soldiers, and fifty million civilians, killed during the pandemic that followed the war.

This Seminar is for the practitioner and the theorist. We will seek to answer questions such as: What constitutes queer performance?, Is queer what you are or what you do? and What are the historical ,religious, and political aspects of queer performance? This course is not a history of LGBTQ performance, nor is it a survey of queer theory; rather, this is a course on using performance as a research methodology for interrogating texts and artistic practices.This class invites theatre, dance, and media practitioners to utilize their craft to investigate the multi aspects of queer perfomance.

Students, faculty and alums will collaborate to bring promising design work, which benefits people living in poverty to a place where it can reach its intended audience on a wider scale. For the Spring 2014, we will focus on developing a human powered pearl millet thresher that will be field tested during Fall 2014. Pearl millet is a highly nutritious staple cereal grown and consumed in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The plant requires no irrigation and is grown in the harshest of conditions.

This is a hands-on course in which students will create mechanical animal models based on their observations of live animal behaviors. Mechanical models of animals are used in both art and science. Students will learn animal observation techniques, design and fabrication skills, basic electronics and simple programming. This is a class for students with skills or interests in any of the following: electronics, robotics, animal behavior, programming, metal, wood or plastics fabrication.