Encapsulating Sounds

Every culture bears unique sensibilities to sounds. People cultivate distinctive ways of hearing, understanding, and relating to them. These sensibilities are reflected in the processes of sound- and music-making; different instruments are devised to encapsulate distinctive cultural values not only acoustically but also visually in their material forms. This course aims to explore diverse music cultures through the lens of critical organology (the study of musical instruments). We examine a wide range of sound-making devices in their current sociocultural and historical contexts.

Filmmaking Workshop

This course teaches the basic skills of 16mm film production, including camera work, editing, animation, optical printing and preparation for a finished work in film and video. Students will submit weekly written responses to theoretical and historical readings and to screenings of films and DVDs that represent a variety of aesthetic approaches to the moving image. There will be a series of filmmaking assignments culminating in a final project.

Image, Icon, Object, Fetish

What do pictures want? Do they want to be looked at, loved, analyzed, comprehended, worshipped, reproduced, and weaponized or simply acknowledged as life forms that live in the minds of their beholders? What if they harbor a divine or satanic presence? What is the meaning constituted by their media and materialities? What is their power over the beholder? Do images ever die? How do objects become fetishes? How do colonization and racism destroy and change the meanings of images and objects?

Senior Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. A double course.

Open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment:

Senior Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. A double course.

Open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment:

Senior Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. A double course.

Open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment:

Senior Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. A double course.

Open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment:

Senior Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. A double course.

Open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment:

Senior Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. A double course.

Open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment:

Senior Honors

Culminating in one or more pieces of historical writing which may be submitted to the Department for a degree with Honors. A double course.

Open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment:

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