While ethnomusicology -- the study of music in culture -- has traditionally been relegated to the classroom, the field has, in recent years, spawned interest outside of the academy. Recognizing the importance of multicultural education and outreach, arts organizations, funders, and community groups are focusing on the public presentation of community musics for general audiences. In this course, students will learn about applied ethnomusicology as well as how to document and present the musical culture of a specific community in the Pioneer Valley.

This course will provide an opportunity for Division II students in film/video, photography and related media that wish to pursue their own work, creating at least one completed new project for inclusion in the Division II portfolio. Each student will be required to present his/her work to the group several times during the semester. The members of the workshop will provide critical, technical and crew support for one another. Team projects are supported as long as each participant has a distinct and responsible role in the making of that work.

Religious rituals, black magic, and theatrical entertainment were linked by controversy in Shakespeare's England: were they potent acts or empty performances? How did they seduce and endanger unwitting audiences? Foregrounding the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we will explore the intersecting cultural histories of religious persecution, witchcraft trials, and movements to close down the theaters.

Designed to provide an intensive, advanced studio experience for intermediate art students working in any media, this seminar explores contemporary art making by emphasizing reproduction and quotation within unique and editioned works. Students will make meaning with traditional and new media that may include explorations in paint, sculptural form, drawing, photography, book arts, installation, and video. Students will combine unique and mechanically reproduced marks, gestures, surfaces, and imagery using logics of pictorial space, pattern, reference, and self-reference.

No issue in the comparative history of religion dramatizes the challenges of cross-cultural study of religious mysticism." Is the mystic a kind of lone ranger of the soul whose experience reveals and confirms the transcendental unity of all religions, or are the experiences of mystics entirely predetermined by the mystics' respective contexts of history, tradition, language, and culture? What is the relation between the mystic's "interior" experiences and what he or she writes about them?

This is an advanced production/theory course for video and film students interested in developing and strengthening the element of performance in their work. How does performance for the camera differ from performance for the stage? How do we find a physical language and a camera language that expand upon one another in a way that liberates the imagination? This course will explore performance and directing in their most diverse possibilities, in a context specific to film and videomakers.

Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) is a dynamic system for describing, classifying and understanding human movement. Developed by Rudolf Laban, an important scholar and visionary in the field of movement studies, LMA addresses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics of movement.

In the wake of Obama's historic presidency, the American media triumphantly declared that we are living in post-racial times. But is race dead? Are we color-blind? If so, how do we explain the persistence of racism and racial inequality in the US? Utilizing an interdisciplinary amalgam of Ethnic Studies, Critical Race Theory, Media Studies, US Third World Feminism, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Political Philosophy, and Post-Colonial Theory, this course will investigate how "race" continues to shape American society in the post-civil rights era.

According to D.T. Suzuki, one of the most influential Zen Buddhist teachers of the 20th century, Zen is not a system of philosophy, religion, mysticism, nihilism, or even Buddhism. He says, "Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance." Then what is Zen? More importantly, what led D.T. Suzuki to teach Zen Buddhism in this way? This course will start by reading a number of popular books on Zen Buddhism in America, followed by a close analysis of their tenets.

The aim of this course is to provide an introduction to the dramatic traditions and texts of classical Greek and classical Sanskrit theater. From the classical Athenian corpus, selected tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well as comedies by Aristophanes and Menander, will be considered in depth. From the classical Indian tradition, we will read works by Bhasa, Kalidasa, and Shudraka. Special attention will be paid to the historical context of each play and to considerations of staging, ancient and modern.