Global Arc

In this studio course students learn and perform historically significant dance works or perform works that are created for and with them by a range of prominent choreographers. In the choreography precept, students create, perform, and discuss works weekly, practicing a variety of approaches to collaboration, improvisation, experimentation, analytical viewing, and the shaping of choreographic questions. Two performances form the culmination of the course: one is a fully produced program of dances in the Berlind Theatre and the other is a choreographic showing in the Hearst Theater.

A study on turbulence and beauty through dancing. We will be dancing through concepts of time, space, sensation and collectivity while practicing how to move between others, between desires, between matters. Along with improvisational explorations, required readings and viewings, we'll engage with dancing as a practice of being together in the messy and contingent relations constantly informing and reforming our encounters with, in and of the world. How might concepts, when shared in a multitude of ways, invite the emergence of shifting possibilities formed through dancing as study? All dance backgrounds and levels of experience are welcome.

This course is for all students, whether you've never danced before or have lots of experience in any style. We'll develop a community together, gather tools from multiple dance and somatic forms. We'll learn to create structures that support presence, trust, and playfulness in the unknown. We'll dive into personal, social, and performance practices, think about improvisation as both end in itself and a key aspect of creative processes in other art forms and fields as diverse as science, philosophy, and religion. On Wednesdays we'll build our skills and resources; on Fridays we'll put them to use in a co-created improvisation laboratory.

RAVING: Encounters & Collisions in Night/Life will explore the lives and afterlives of queer rave culture as aesthetic, political, and subjective complex societal networks that implicate us as cultural consumers, producers, and participants. As an operating system for overriding the present, situated at the confluence of Blackness, queerness, and transness, rave culture propels and alters conditions for practicing temporary liveness through rapture & rupture. Through dancing explorations, lectures, discussions, as well as collectively imagined and constructed raves, this course will invite us to continuously renew our habits of assembly.

This course discusses the use of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) for climate policy and energy research. The course gives an overview of two types of IAMs: detailed process IAMs that evaluate how mitigation options and technology choices influence regional emissions and global climate; and benefit-cost IAMs that estimate the social cost of carbon or the optimal emission trajectory to maximize global welfare. The course then dives into one detailed process IAM, the Global Change Analysis Model, to demonstrate how IAMs have been applied to examine climate policy choice and impacts, air quality and health co-benefits, etc.

The course will cover hydrogen value chain from production to utilization in the context of decarbonization of industry. Hydrogen properties will be introduced. Fundamentals of hydrogen production technologies will be covered such as fuel processing (hydrocarbon reforming) and non-reforming production including biomass gasification, biological methods. Biomass, algae, plastic and coal feedstocks will be considered. Hydrogen conversion to energy, chemicals and utilization, will be developed. Storage technologies will be discussed. Emphasis will be on understanding reaction mechanisms as well as performance indicators to compare technologies.

Public trust in the media and journalists continues to plummet. That is especially true in minority communities that critics say are too often ignored. Where residents say they see too many negative depictions of people who look like them if they see anyone at all. Beyond that, according to polls, most journalists say their newsrooms still lack staffing and editorial diversity, especially along ethnic and racial lines. This course will examine why and how the media struggles to cover the issues and concerns of significant portions of the population in an increasingly diverse country.

An ancient Mediterranean power and a contemporary gateway between the Global South and Europe, Greece is a small country caught up in large issues, including the pressures of global migration and climate change. This seminar combines classroom work and field reporting to train students in the critical thinking skills and best practices of international correspondents. Students will spend five weeks based in Athens, as well as on reporting trips within Greece. Through fieldwork, research, interviews, and close readings, students will explore the complex causes of global migration and the climate crisis.

In this course, students will read, observe, and reflect upon how media representations of mental illness and those who treat it have fed stigma. They'll come to understand the pernicious effects of the stories we tell on real people with real problems that require real help. They'll also read and create work that sets the record straight, learning techniques for insightful and compassionate reporting, informed and inclusive research, and storytelling that's both artful and accurate.

This hands-on seminar uses documentary film as a tool of research and issue-based reporting. Students will produce short films on environmental justice in Trenton, nine miles from campus. The stories we tackle will provide complex and dramatic raw materials for nonfiction cinema, and a backdrop for engagement with research methods, filmcraft and ethics. Students will study Trenton's industrial history, report on local environmental issues, and interview activists, advocates, and scientists. Readings, films, and conversations with leading filmmakers will complement fieldwork. The semester ends with two public screenings.