When discussing Buddhism, why is it that westerners often project a romanticized and idealized image of Buddhism unfounded in Asian history? For instance, why do we imagine Tibet as a place of mysticism, simplicity and inner peace, while remaining completely ignorant about Tibetan history, geography, political systems, foreign relations and/or social customs? In addition, what do Buddhist mindfulness meditation and western psychotherapy have in common? What can neuroscientists tell us about the influence of Buddhist meditation on the human brain?

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, and artists, we will traverse a selected history of 20th-century art guided by a selected history of 20th-century art theory.

The modern world is shaped and deeply influenced by modern science and technology. While Muslim societies made valuable contributions to natural philosophy in medieval times, the relation to modern science is more complicated. In this course we will look at the reaction of Muslim intellectuals in the 19th and 20th centuries to the advent of modernity and how it shaped their views regarding modern science. The second half of the class will look at contemporary debates over "Islamic Science," the trend of finding modern science in the Qur'an, and biological evolution.

This is a class for musicians interested in developing their expressive and creative skills through improvisation. It is open to all instrumentalists, including voice and electronics. It is open to students from any musical background. You will be challenged to expand your instrumental vocabulary, and to use these languages in a context of collective improvisation. We will look at improvisational music making from a multitude of angles, breaking it down and putting it together again.

This course is for advanced film and video students who are prepared to work both collaboratively on group exercises and also on their own individual projects. Students will be expected to complete several exercises and a final project. The course will deal in some depth with the theory and practice of working with sound and music for film including 16mm sound-synch filmmaking, audio recording on location and the set, and post-production editing and mixing. Students will practice making sound tracks for film and video using digital editing tools.

In this course, students will examine coming-of-age narratives to consider the ways in which writers explore the challenges of growing up Black in the Diaspora. We will engage critical questions such as: What does Black childhood look like? Does a Black childhood exist? Can it? How is Black childhood defined and what defines it? Further, what is the relationship between Black childhood and the project of nation building and the idea of national belonging?

This course is for students with the solid knowledge of Western music fundamentals including the proficiency with staff notation. After a quick rigorous review of these basics, we delve deeper into functions of diatonic harmony, beginning with two-voice species counterpoint composition with basic melodic embellishments. The class then proceeds to four-part harmony and voicing techniques. In this section, we also explore relationship between cadences and forms; students compose a four-voice chorale using a binary form.

What is a photograph in the world of the pixel? This course will explore the history, concept and craft of the photographic print, considering the materiality of photographs amid digital creation. Students will study an array of image making techniques, investigate the shape images take from screen to sculpture and analyze the changing and often contentious definition of a photograph.

In this interdisciplinary course students will work in the medium(s) of their choosing to explore the ways in which text and image interact with and complicate one another. We will look at a wide array of work that incorporates text and image, including but not limited to: Picasso, Braque, concrete poetry, Twombly, Rosler, Spero Piper, Krueger, Kalin, Child, Seydel, Ligon, Kaprow, Ono, Grand Fury. The main emphasis of this class will be experimentation and collaboration.

This course will examine dance through the lens of culture and culture through dance. We'll study diverse examples -- Western, non-western, contemporary, historical -- to consider the many roles dance plays, and the ways dance embodies, creates, transmits, changes and is bound by culture. Students will investigate dance's role in religion, rites of passage, politics, war, identity formation, medicine and social relations, and will discuss such issues as ownership and appropriation, tradition and change, influence and fusion.