How do the topics of abolition and textiles come together? Marginalized communities have historically used folkloric, textile arts and material culture to amplify abolitionist causes. From secret quilt codes of the Underground Railroad to an abolitionist community sustained by a silk mill in Florence, Massachusetts how might thinking with textiles intervene on patriarchal systems rooted in rigidity, isolation and punishment?

In this first-year seminar, students will be introduced to and acquainted with the essay form as it has been endeavored by African American writers throughout the 19th and 20th century. This course emphasizes the essay as a written genre that is meditative, argumentative, and inquisitive; it is a form that open-endedly captures a course of thought, often times raising more questions than proffering secure answers to its inquiries.

For as long as there have been people, people have been thinking about the future. But who gets to decide what the future looks like? And what do our visions of the future reflect about ourselves? In this class, we'll use books, movies, and Mount Holyoke's own Archives to explore what people of the past and present imagined the future would be.

Since its origins as a recognizable genre in the early 19th century, scientists have been central figures in horror literature. In these stories where they inspire anxiety, fear, and occasionally hope, scientific knowledge-makers, their practices, and their ability to manipulate the natural world are often placed in opposition to more traditional ways of being.

Surveying contemporary LGBTQIA+ participation in mainline American Protestant denominations, this first-year seminar will consider recent congregational histories and emergent queer Christian theology that, together, form some public-square debate. Examining these phenomena in a multicultural variety of American Christian cultures, the course will privilege queer Christian voices through interactive primary sources: oral histories, site visits, and guest speakers.

Have you ever wondered why we are so concerned with our carbon footprint? Why don't we worry about our oxygen footprint? Or silicon? What makes carbon so special? This first-year seminar will delve into the reasons that carbon, and uniquely carbon, is central to climate change. We will discuss the properties of carbon and why those properties have resulted in a fossil fuel-based economy.

An introduction to the history and vocabulary of West African dance, emphasizing the central role that dance plays in African cultures. This class will introduce students to movements from traditional concepts to neo-traditional West African dance forms and the African Diaspora. Students will learn to identify the aesthetic principles and develop physical and artistic skills such as explicit sound, music, and movement connection; call and response; body isolation; and the individuality of movement expressions.

A study of the histories, cultures and lineages of African, Asian, Indigenous and Latin peoples, this course is a framework for understanding their influence on the American concert dance tradition. Specifically, this course examines the worlds of dancing and dancemaking as they intersect with cultural and gendered differences, geographic location, race, and ethnicity. Students will discuss issues and topics in global dance practices through readings by dance scholars and artists and the viewing of filmed media. Embodied material will enliven some class discussions.

In this course, students will explore the various ways in which dance and embodied performance generate, adapt, and incorporate text in practice. Our endeavor envisions and engages with text as a permanent artifact that is enlivened through the crucible of the dance-making process. Students will take inspiration from other logocentric forms such as plays, poetry, prose etc.

The structure of this seminar, a required course for dance majors, has three emphases: supporting the development of research, performance and production; offering practical tools for sustaining a life in the arts after academia; and investing in process (your own and that of your cohort). Students should sign up for both fall and spring semesters of this seminar. The fall semester focuses primarily on embodied and scholarly research and the spring semester is meant to support the production of capstone projects.