Global Arc

A film/video course introducing the techniques of shooting and editing digital video. Works of film/video art are analyzed in order to explore the development of, and innovations in, cinematic language. Production is oriented toward film/video as a visual art, including narrative, documentary, and experimental genres. Several short video projects produced during the semester. Two studio classes, five hours per week. Prerequisite: instructor's permission.

A film/video course introducing the techniques of shooting and editing digital video. Works of film/video art are analyzed in order to explore the development of, and innovations in, cinematic language. Production is oriented toward film/video as a visual art, including narrative, documentary, and experimental genres. Several short video projects produced during the semester. Two studio classes, five hours per week. Prerequisite: instructor's permission.

This course will give students an introduction to documentary film and video production, with a special emphasis on the practical challenges of producing films in the real world. Students will learn fundamental filmmaking techniques from a professor with thirteen years experience running her own film production company, as well as a handful of guest professionals in the fields of cinematography, casting, and editing. Production and critique of student work will be augmented by film screenings, readings, and discussion of the effects that practical realities can have on the creative process.

This studio course will be equal parts directing and screenwriting, with a special emphasis on social issue-driven material. Students will learn how to bring a script to life in collaboration with actors, production crews, and their fellow students. The course will also critically examine a selection of powerful narrative films and analyze their different approaches to visual storytelling. Specific topics covered will be: the basic tenets of film direction, writing for the screen, effective ways to work with actors, the post-production process, and how journalistic research methods can inform the early stages of the filmmaking process.

An introduction to narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques. This course teaches the basic tools and techniques for storytelling with digital media by providing technical instruction in camera operation, nonlinear editing, and sound design paired with the conceptual frameworks of shot design, visual composition, film grammar and cinema syntax.

Students in VIS 300 will create sculptures that relate directly to the body and compel performance, interaction, and movement. Students in the associated DAN 300 will create dances that are informed by garments, portable objects and props. The two classes will come together periodically to compare notes and consider how context informs perceptions of sculpture as performance and the body as object. A lecture series of prominent choreographers and artists will accompany the courses. One two-hour class and one three-hour class per week; course is open enrollment.

This course is designed to allow students to explore more deeply the process and meaning of painting. Students will complete a set of structured assignments and are encouraged to develop an independent direction. Contemporary critical theory is integrated into the course. Two studio classes, five hours per week. Prerequisite: 203, 204 and instructor's permission.

What kinds of art issues forth from need? Taking its name from Brazilian film director Glauber Rocha's 1965 manifesto, this course investigates how artists, writers, and theorists have sought to understand political, social, economic, and material limitations as generative conditions for aesthetic form. Moving between Latin American debates of the 1960s and 70s and the contemporary global moment, we examine such concepts as hunger, scarcity, imperfection, reproduction, and ecological justice though works by Cecilia Vicuña, Steve McQueen, Maria Thereza Alves, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Jumana Mana and others.

What does "Justice" mean? What do efforts to achieve "Justice" tell us about injury, retribution, and peace? This class will explore how justice is defined and sought by looking at criminality, fights for indigenous and women's rights, post-conflict transitions, environmental catastrophe, debates about reparations, and intimate forms of repair. We will combine a global perspective with engaged local work to think about what struggles for justice look like in theory and on the ground. These debates will illuminate about how the past is apprehended, and how visions of possible utopias and dystopias are produced in the present.

This course is an anthropological and experience-based exploration of video games. As we consider scholarship in Digital Anthropology, Game Studies, and African American Studies, we scrutinize the design of games and engage in gameplay, with a particular focus on Black experiences. Throughout the course, we probe how video games utilize and interact with race and, in doing so, we advance an intersectional approach that also accounts for class, gender, and sexuality. The course's core set of theoretical and methodological tools helps students to engage with gaming critically and to create alternative games in the future.