Advanced Modern

Intermediate and Advanced study in modern technique focuses on body level issues of strength, support, alignment, articulation, and initiation; and performance issues of rhythmic clarity, spatial clarity, intention, embodiment, intricate coordinations, and expanding personal vocabularies. Students will build capacity for physical endurance and active presence as well as a deepening awareness of the body's potential.

Advanced Ballet

Course is for advanced dancers and will stress complex classical ballet technique combinations, concentrating on turns at the barre, turns in the big poses in the centre, and batterie in the allegro. Artistry, presentation, and musicality of dance will be incorporated, with the grande allegro serving as the focus of the class. The last half hour will be devoted to advanced pointe technique.

Senior Capstone Seminar

Each dance major will be expected to be involved in a senior project during their final year of study. One should sign up for Dance 390, Senior Seminar for both fall and spring semesters. Senior projects can vary, from choreographic or performance work to research topics.

The Sky

A hands-on introduction to observing and understanding the extraterrestrial sky. Daily and annual motions of the sun, moon, planets, and stars; celestial coordinate systems; apparent brightnesses and colors of the stars; time; calendars. Observations at the Williston Observatory with the unaided eye, visually with the eight-inch telescope, and by electronic camera with computer-controlled telescopes.

Enterpr. Startups/Soc. Entrep

This is a project-based experiential learning course teaching entrepreneurial teams to rapidly build, test, and cycle through models on the way to discovering and implementing an organization, designing and providing a product or service, and offering a solution to a global-to-local problem. Students will learn about and engage in the creation and building process, while exploring and discovering key issues in social impact, organizations and groups, creative solutions, economics, and finance.

Reflecting: Intern./Research

Learn to speak with confidence and clarity about your summer internship or research project. Connect it to you academic coursework. What have you learned? How is it useful? What are your next steps? Students will reflect on their experience and collaborate with others to generate useful knowledge. Required for the Nexus but open to all students. For more information, email nexus@mtholyoke.edu.

Spain and Islam

This course will explore questions and concerns regarding the "Islamic constant" of Spanish history. We will focus on four major political and cultural contexts: the coexistance and conflicts among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Iberia; the "moriscos" (converted Muslims) of Imperial Spain (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries); Spanish orientalism and colonial enterprises in Africa between the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries; and the question of the Muslim emigrants in contemporary Spain.

Screenwriting

The screenplay is a unique and ephemeral form that exists as a blueprint for something else: a finished film. How do you convey on the page a story that will take shape within an audio-visual medium? The screenwriter must have an understanding of both the language of narrative film as well as the general shape and mechanics of film stories. This advanced course will cover dialogue, characterization, plot, story arc, genre, and cinematic structure. We will analyze scenes from fictional narrative films -- both short and feature length -- and read the scripts that accompany these films.

Cultures of Power in Mexico

This course introduces the anthropology of Mexico through ethnographies of power, knowledge, and indigeneity. Drawing on feminist and decolonial critical methods, we will trace constructions of Mexican indigeneity through two intersecting stories. The first centers the effects of neocolonial capitalism on indigenous lives, with attention to contemporary ethnographic themes including bioprospecting, narcoculture, social movements, and resistance/refusal.

Locomotion

One of the most intriguing features of animals is the range of ways in which they are able to move. From running and jumping to climbing, swimming and flying, different forms of locomotion have allowed animals to exploit most of earth's habitats. In this course we will study the anatomy, physiology, biomechanics and biochemistry underlying different types of animal movement.
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