|
|
Catalogue 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
|
|
|
|
| |
Mathematics and Statistics: II. Intermediate Prerequisites for all intermediate courses: MATH 126 and MATH 127 , or permission of the department, unless otherwise indicated.
|
| |
-
MATH 228 - Methods of Applied Mathematics Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
Survey of techniques used in the physical sciences. Topics include: ordinary and partial differential equations, series representation of functions, integral transforms, Fourier series and integrals. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 126 and MATH 127 , or permission of the department.
|
| |
-
MATH 240 - Introduction to Statistics Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
The purpose of this course is to introduce the methods by which we extract information from data. Topics are similar to those in MATH 141, with more coverage of probability and more intense computational and computer work. Ming-Wen An, Jingchen Hu.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 126 and 127 .
Three 50-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MATH 241 - Probability Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
This course in introductory probability theory covers topics including combinatorics, discrete and continuous random variables, distribution functions, joint distributions, independence, properties of expectations, and basic limit theorems. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 126 and MATH 127 , or permission of the department.
|
| |
-
MATH 242 - Applied Statistical Modeling Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Applied Statistical Modeling is offered as a second course in statistics in which we present a set of case studies and introduce appropriate statistical modeling techniques for each. Topics may include: multiple linear regression, logistic regression, log-linear regression, survival analysis, an introduction to Bayesian modeling, and modeling via simulation. Other topics may be substituted for these or added as time allows. Students will be expected to conduct data analyses in R. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 126 and MATH 127 ; MATH 141 .
|
| |
-
MATH 261 - Introduction to Number Theory Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
Topics include: divisibility, congruence, modular arithmetic, diophantine equations, number-theoretic functions, distribution of the prime numbers. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 126 and MATH 127 , or permission of the department.
|
| |
-
MATH 263 - Discrete Mathematics Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Mathematical induction, elements of set theory and logic, permutations and combinations, relations, topics in graph theory, generating functions, recurrence relations, Boolean algebras. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 126 and MATH 127 , or permission of the department.
|
| |
-
MATH 268 - Protecting Information: Applications of Abstract Algebra
1 unit(s)
In today’s information age, it is vital to secure messages against eavesdropping or corruption by noise. Our study begins by surveying some historical techniques and proceeds to examining some of the most important codes currently being used to protect information. These include various public key cryptographic schemes (RSA and its variants) that are used to safeguard sensitive internet communications, as well as linear codes, mathematically elegant and computationally practical means of correcting transmissions errors. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 126 and MATH 127 , or permission of the department.
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MATH 290 - Field Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
|
| |
-
MATH 297 - Topics in Mathematics Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
Reading Course
Prerequisite(s): MATH 221 or equivalent, and permission of the instructor.
|
| |
-
MATH 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Election should be made in consultation with a department adviser.
|
Mathematics and Statistics: III. Advanced Prerequisites for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , or permission of the department, unless otherwise indicated.
|
| |
-
MATH 301 - Senior Seminar Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Areas of study and units of credit vary from year to year. The department.
Open only to seniors who have a declared major in mathematics. It is strongly recommended that MATH 361 be completed before enrolling in Mathematics 301.
|
| |
-
MATH 315 - Advanced Topics in Applied Mathematics Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course introduces three main types of partial differential equations: diffusion, elliptic, and hyperbolic. We develop such equations from real-world examples and applications from physics, biology, epidemiology, and from student interests. We explore several mathematical and numerical strategies for solving these models and introduce ways to glean information from them. Students may also be exposed to a collection of non-standard mathematical modeling techniques: Cellular Automata, Pair Approximation Equations, and Agent Based Modeling. Familiarity with programming in Matlab is developed throughout the semester.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 220 , MATH 221 and MATH 228 .
|
| |
-
MATH 321 - Real Analysis Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
A rigorous treatment of topics in the classical theory of functions of a real variable from the point of view of metric space topology including limits, continuity, sequences and series of functions, and the Riemann-Stieltjes integral. The department.
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , unless otherwise indicated.
|
| |
-
MATH 324 - Complex Analysis Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Integration and differentiation in the complex plane. Topics include: holomorphic (differentiable) functions, power series as holomorphic functions, Taylor and Laurent series, singularities and residues, complex integration and, in particular, Cauchy’s Theorem and its consequences. The department.
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , unless otherwise indicated.
|
| |
-
MATH 327 - Advanced Topics in Real Analysis Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Continuation of MATH 321 . Measure theory, the Lebesgue integral, Banach spaces of measurable functions. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 321 .
|
| |
-
MATH 328 - Theory of Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems
1 unit(s)
Existence and uniqueness theorems for ordinary differential equations; general theory and eigenvalue methods for first order linear systems. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 321 or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MATH 331 - Topics in Geometry Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Topics vary from year to year and may include differential geometry, fractal geometry, Euclidean geometry, hyperbolic geometry, projective geometry, and algebraic geometry.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 220 and MATH 221 , unless otherwise indicated.
|
| |
-
MATH 335 - Differential Geometry
1 unit(s)
The geometry of curves and surfaces in 3-dimensional space and an introduction to manifolds. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 321 .
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MATH 339 - Topology
1 unit(s)
Introductory point-set and algebraic topology; topological spaces, metric spaces, continuous mappings, connectedness, compactness and separation properties; the fundamental group; simplicial homology. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 321 or MATH 361 .
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MATH 341 - Statistical Inference Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An introduction to statistical theory through the mathematical development of topics including resampling methods, sampling distributions, likelihood, interval and point estimation, and introduction to statistical inferential methods. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 220 , MATH 221 and MATH 241 .
Three 50-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MATH 342 - Applied Statistical Modeling Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
For students who have completed MATH 341 . Students in this course attend the same lectures as those in MATH 242 , but will be required to complete extra reading and problems. Ming-Wen An.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 220 , MATH 221 and MATH 341 .
Three 50-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MATH 347 - Bayesian Statistics Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
An introduction to Bayesian statistics. Topics include Bayes Theorem, common prior and posterior distributions, hierarchical models, Bayesian linear regression, latent variable models, and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The course uses R extensively for simulations. Ming-Wen An, Jingchen Hu.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 220 , MATH 221 and MATH 241 .
|
| |
-
MATH 351 - Mathematical Logic
1 unit(s)
An introduction to mathematical logic. Topics are drawn from computability theory, model theory, and set theory. Mathematical and philosophical implications also are discussed. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 321 or MATH 361 .
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MATH 361 - Modern Algebra Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
The theory of groups and an introduction to ring theory. Topics in group theory include: isomorphism theorems, generators and relations, group actions, Sylow theorems, fundamental theorem of finite abelian groups. The department.
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , unless otherwise indicated.
|
| |
-
MATH 364 - Advanced Linear Algebra Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Further study in the theory of vector spaces and linear maps. Topics may include: scalar products and dual space; symmetric, hermitian and unitary operators; eigenvectors and eigenvalues; spectral theorems; canonical forms. The department.
Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , unless otherwise indicated.
|
| |
-
MATH 367 - Advanced Topics in Modern Algebra Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Continuation of MATH 361 . Rings and fields, with a particular emphasis on Galois theory. The department.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 361 .
|
| |
-
MATH 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Election requires the approval of a departmental adviser and of the instructor who supervises the work.
|
Media Studies: I. Introductory |
| |
-
MEDS 160 - Approaches to Media Studies Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
This course explores concepts and issues in the study of media, attentive to but not limited by the question of the “new” posed by new media technologies. Our survey of key critical approaches to media is anchored in specific case studies drawn from a diverse archive of media artifacts, industries, and technologies: from phonograph to photography, cinema to networked hypermedia, from typewriter to digital code. We examine the historical and material specificity of different media technologies and the forms of social life they enable, engage critical debates about media, culture and power, and consider problems of reading posed by specific media objects and processes, new and old. We take the multi-valence of “media”—a term designating text and apparatus of textual transmission, content and conduit—as a central problem of knowledge for the class. Our goal throughout is to develop the research tools, modes of reading, and forms of critical practice that help us aptly to describe and thereby begin to understand the increasingly mediated world in which we live. Paulina Bren, Justin Patch (a); Thomas Porcello (b).
|
| |
-
MEDS 184 - Star Wars: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death in a Galaxy Far, Far Away Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
In a 19 September 1944 article for the French resistance newspaper, Combat, Albert Camus wrote, “Revolution is not revolt. What carried the Resistance for four years was revolt––the complete, obstinate, and at first nearly blind refusal to accept an order that would bring men to their knees. Revolt begins first in the human heart. But there comes a time when revolt spreads from heart to spirit, when a feeling becomes an idea, when impulse leads to concerted action. This is the moment of revolution.” Our course examines the multimodal rhetorics of conquest and empire, freedom and rebellion in the Star Wars canon by situating the films in a theoretical context provided by Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth), Hannah Arendt (Between Past and Future) and Albert Camus (The Rebel). Within this post-colonial context, students are afforded the opportunity to design and conduct their own research-based projects that consider representations of the intersections between Imperialism, revolution, and identity politics.
Open only to freshmen; satisfies the college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 186 - Violence in Ancient Literature and American Cinema Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 186 ) “I would guess that the vast majority of the people who are seeing it … are taking it for kicks and thrills and are coming away from it palpitating with a vicarious sense of the enjoyment of war.” So writes New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther about the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen, but could his words not equally apply to the grisly war violence of the Homeric Iliad? In other words, why are violent poems like the Iliad and Aeneid typically exempt from the kinds of criticisms that are leveled at cinematic violence? In this course we explore questions of taste and representation by putting works of ancient literature, especially ancient epic, in dialogue with landmarks of American screen violence like Scarface, Bonnie and Clyde and Psycho. In addition to formal analysis of cinematic and literary texts, we investigate the impact of gender, genre, medium, audience and production context on the ways that violence is depicted. Students also have the opportunity to collaborate on their own cinematic adaptation of a scene of ancient literary violence. The department.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
Media Studies: II. Intermediate |
| |
-
MEDS 214 - Process, Prose, Pedagogy Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 214 ) This course is a study of the ways in which the Academy mediates knowledge: What is an argument? Are there fundamental differences between popular and scholarly arguments? What about critical and creative arguments? And how should knowledge/scholarship be communicated in the 21st century? What is authorship for that matter? It is also interested in the ways scholars undermine the structures of the Academy from the center and the periphery alike in order to challenge, if not change, the system. What are their methods? What are their agendas? One thing is certain, the ways in which scholars present their work and their reasons for doing so are becoming as diverse, complex, and unique as the scholars themselves.
As such, we pay particular attention to the boundaries between argument and opinion or fact, creative and critical work, popular and scholarly discourses, old and new media, and between producers and consumers of knowledge. The aim of this course, then, is to help you develop both a practice and a habit of mind––a way of writing and a way of thinking about writing. As scholars, we all must attend to an extraordinary and disparate set of concerns ranging from matters of argumentation and evidence to questions of style, coherence, and correctness; therefore, our multimodal texts span the deeply theoretical and insistently practical––even the imaginative––as we consider selections of rhetoric, fiction, and creative non-fiction that foreground their status as arguments. Matthew Schultz.
|
| |
-
MEDS 217 - Studies in Popular Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 217 and MUSI 217 ) History of Rock. This class examines the social history of rock from Elvis Presley to the present through examination of musical trends, socio-economic and demographic changes, social and political movements and issues in fandom, production and reception. Seminal artists and events are examined along with the development of genres, subcultures and accompanying trends like fashion, slang, literature, identity politics, as well as the influence of TV, film, radio, video, art, the internet and the music industry. Issues of race, class, gender, age, politics, censorship and hybridity will form the backbone of the course, as well as rock beyond the Anglophone world as a global art form. Justin Patch.
Recommended: one unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 218 - Chinese Popular Culture
1 unit(s)
(Same as CHIN 218 ) The course analyzes contemporary Chinese entertainment and popular culture. It provides both historical coverage and grounding in various theoretical and methodological problems. Topics focus on thematic contents and forms of entertainment through television, radio, newspaper, cinema, theatre, music, print and material culture. The course also examines the relations between the heritage of traditional Chinese entertainment and the influences of Western culture. All readings and class discussions are in English. Wenwei Du.
Prerequisite(s): one course in language, literature, culture, film, drama, or Asian Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MEDS 250 - Exploratory Media Practices Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course instructs students in a varied set of practical media skills in order to interrogate and possibly transform the uses to which they are habitually put. It grounds a creative reflection on the relation between theory and practice through the critical use of production technologies. Each semester is devoted to a topic or a question to be explored through three distinct kinds of media “making.” These techniques include graphic design, literary journalism, sound recording, book production, the digital still image and its sequencing, the moving image and post-production techniques, computer graphics and physical computing, user interface design. Students will compose a formally sophisticated, rhetorically inventive “essay” in three medium specific idioms. They will also be asked to determine how the three exercises go together, how they work as interlocking parts of a transmedia narrative or ensemble.
Topic for 2017/18a: Investigating critical media practice in the production of multi-media artifacts including sound, video and interactive 3D environments. Course work is organized around the concept of “mapping” as a metaphor for many kinds of media production. The course also addresses themes of preservation and waste; memory and forgetting; inclusion and exclusion. Thomas Ellman.
Prerequisite(s): MEDS 160 or permission of the instructor.
Two 2-hour periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 254 - Emotional Engagement with Film Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as FILM 254 and PSYC 254 ) While movies engage our emotions in psychologically significant ways, scholarship on the psychological allure and impact of film has existed primarily at the interdisciplinary margins. This course aims to bring such scholarship into the foreground. We begin with a careful examination of the appeal and power of narrative, as well as processes of identification and imagined intimacy with characters, before taking a closer analytical look at specific film genres (e.g., melodrama, horror, comedy, action, social commentary) both in their own right and in terms of their psychological significance (e.g., why do we enjoy sad movies? How do violent movies influence viewer aggression? How might socially conscious films inspire activism or altruism?) In addition to delving into theoretical and empirical papers, a secondary goal of the course is to engage students as collaborators; brainstorm and propose innovative experimental methods for testing research questions and hypotheses that emerge in step with course materials. Dara Greenwood and Sarah Kozloff.
Prerequisite(s): for Psychology majors - PSYC 105 or PSYC 106 ; for Film majors - FILM 175 or FILM 210 ; for Media Studies majors - MEDS 160 .
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
|
| |
-
MEDS 256 - American Television History Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as FILM 256 ) This course surveys the history of television in the United States from the 1940s to the present. It examines the social and industrial significance of television and its impact on issues such as class, race, gender, consumerism, and national identity. We investigate changes in televisual aesthetics and narrative paradigms and the ways that television responded to significant cultural, political and technological changes in American society. Throughout the semester we draw upon a range of critical frameworks including media industry studies, genre theory, and celebrity studies as we address topics such as the attempts to develop alternate models of broadcasting, networks’ efforts to bolster television’s cultural status, media convergence, and the formal characteristics of different television genres. Screenings include I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Orange is the New Black. Alex Kupfer
Prerequisite(s): FILM 175 or FILM 210 for students registering for FILM 256. MEDS 160 for students registering for MEDS 256.
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
|
| |
-
MEDS 258 - Studies in Sound
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 258 ) This course familiarizes students with the emerging field of sound studies. We spend the first eight weeks exploring the different facets of sound culture: histories and ethnographies of listening; theories of sound capture and reproduction; the political economy of recording media (particularly the MP3); the experience of the modern American soundscape. We conclude with case studies of contemporary sonic experiences: “glitch”-based digital music and the aesthetics of failure; new developments in sonic weaponry; art and activism that “listens” to drones and the US-Mexico border. Hua Hsu.
Prerequisite(s): 100-level course work within the multidisciplinary programs, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 260 - Media Theory Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course aims to ramify our understanding of “mediality”—that is, the visible and invisible, audible and silent contexts in which physical messages stake their ghostly meanings. The claims of media theory extend beyond models of communication: media do not simply transport preexisting ideas, nor do they merely shape ideas in transit. Attending to the complex network of functions that make up media ecologies (modes of inscription, transmission, storage, circulation, and retrieval) demonstrates the role media play not only in the molding of ideas and opinions, but also in the constitution of subjectivities, social spheres, and non-human circuits of exchange (images, information, capital). Texts and topics vary from year to year, but readings are drawn from a broad spectrum of classical and contemporary sources. Heesok Chang.
Prerequisite(s): MEDS 160 or permission of the instructor.
|
| |
-
MEDS 263 - Anthropology Goes to the Movies: Film, Video, and Ethnography
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 263 ) This course examines how film and video are used in ethnography as tools for study and as means of ethnographic documentary and representation. Topics covered include history and theory of visual anthropology, issues of representation and audience, indigenous film, and contemporary ethnographic approaches to popular media. Colleen Cohen.
Prerequisite(s): previous coursework in Anthropology or Film or Media Studies or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods, plus 3-hour preview laboratory.
|
| |
-
MEDS 264 - The Metropolitan Avant-Gardes Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 264 and URBS 264 ) Radical prototypes of self-organization were forged by the new groups of artists, writers, filmmakers and architects that emerged in the early twentieth century as they sought to define the future. The course studies the avant-gardes’ different and often competing efforts to meet the changing conditions that industrialization was bringing to culture, societies and economies between 1889 and 1929, when works of art, design, and film entered the city, the press, the everyday lives and the wars that beset them all. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods and one weekly film screening.
|
| |
-
MEDS 265 - Modern Art and the Mass Media: the New Public Sphere
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 265 and URBS 265 ) When the public sphere was reset during the twentieth century by a new order of mass media, the place of art and artists in the new order needed to be claimed. The course studies the negotiations between modern art and the mass media (advertising, cinema, TV), in theory and in practice, during the years between the Great Depression and the liberation movements of the late 1960s–the foundation stones of our own contemporary culture. Neither the theory nor the practice has become obsolete. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 .
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods and one weekly film screening.
|
| |
-
MEDS 266 - Indigenous and Oppositional Media
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 266 ) As audiovisual and digital media technologies proliferate and become more accessible globally, they become important tools for indigenous peoples and activist groups in struggles for recognition and self-determination, for articulating community concerns and for furthering social and political transformations. This course explores the media practices of indigenous peoples and activist groups, and through this exploration achieves a more nuanced and intricate understanding of the relation of the local to the global. In addition to looking at the films, videos, radio and television productions, and Internet interventions of indigenous media makers and activists around the world, the course looks at oppositional practices employed in the consumption and distribution of media. Course readings are augmented by weekly screenings and demonstrations of media studied, and students explore key theoretical concepts through their own interventions, making use of audiovisual and digital technologies. Colleen Cohen.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods, plus one 3-hour preview laboratory.
|
| |
-
MEDS 268 - After 1968: the Activation of Art Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 268 and URBS 268 ) This course studies the emancipation of the visual arts after 1968, here and abroad, together with the political and philosophical discussions that guided them. Theory and practice would form new combinations. The traditional fine arts as well as the new media, performance, film, architecture and installation art are treated as part of the wider global evolution creating new theaters of action, critique, community and hope. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 -ART 106 .
Two 75-minute periods and one weekly screening.
|
| |
-
MEDS 271 - Visual Urbanism Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 271 ) This course examines correspondences between the emergent metrop-olis and practices of urban spectatorship. We approach the moderniza- tion of vision as an aspect of capitalist urbanization, as we engage the shifting media forms that have refracted and regulated modernity’s urban conditions from the mid-19th century to the present: camera obscura, magic lantern, window display, crime photography, film noir, snapshot, broadcast television, billboard, hand-held video, SimCity, Google earth, CCTV, immersive VR. Issues we investigate include: the increasing predominance of visual culture in urban everyday life; the distracted attention of the urban spectator as a mode of modern subjectivity; the role of the visual in shaping both official and vernac- ular understandings of the city; the use of city image and urban brand in urban development; the merging of physical and information space as urban landscapes become media-saturated environments; urban surveillance and the use of the visual as a vector of modern political power. Throughout, we approach urban visibility as a fiercely ambiva- lent force: both a source of spectacle and a tool to render legible the hidden powers that structure urban everyday life. Readings include works by Roland Barthes, Jonathan Beller, Walter Benjamin, Guliano Bruno, Susan Buck-Morss, Christine Boyer, Rey Chow, Elizabeth Currid, Jonathan Crary, Guy Debord, Anne Friedberg, Eric Gordon, Tom Gunning, Miriam Greenberg, Frederic Jameson, Rem Koolhaas, Kevin Lynch, W.T.J. Mitchell, Venessa Schwartz, William White, and Raymond Williams. Lisa Brawley.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 280 - Social Psychological Approaches to Mass Media: Understanding Content, Motivation, and Impact Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as PSYC 280 ) This course is designed to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of “media psychology,” which applies social scientific theory and methodology to the study media use, content, and impact. We first review theoretical contributions from both Communication Studies and Social Psychology before moving into a range of “hot topics” in the field (e.g., violent media, persuasion and advertising, news, politics, representations of social groups, social media). Along the way, we consider: psychological processes relevant to media use and impact, individual differences that motivate selective exposure and reception, the positive and negative effect that media may have on our attitudes and behaviors, and the complexities of developing and executing media effects research. Dara Greenwood.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 281 - The Comics Course Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 281 ) An exploration of topics in comics history, theory, aesthetics, and politics. Subjects and texts may include: women’s diary comics (Julie Doucet’s My New York Diary and Gabrielle Bell’s July 2011), conflict comics (Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde), graphic horror and representation (Charles Burns’s Black Hole), race and representation (Jennings’ and Duffy’s The Hole: Consumer Culture, Volume 1), genre and gender (Wonder Woman from origins to contemporary permutations), meta-comics (Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan), comics and the culture of children (Schulz’s Peanuts, Jansson’s Moomin, and Barry’s Marlys), comics and sexuality (Carol Swain’s Gast, Bisco Hatori’s Ouran High School Social Club, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home), disability comics (the Oracle series, Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye, and Allie Brosch’s “Hyperbole and a Half”), and comics and silence (Shaun Tan’s The Arrival). Readings also include materials in comics studies, media studies, and literary studies. Peter Antelyes.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 282 - Media Industries: Fox Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as FILM 282 ) This course explores the history of Twentieth Century-Fox and Fox Broadcasting Company from its emergence in the 1910s to its present day position as one of the world’s largest media conglomerates. It uses Fox to explore changes in aesthetic paradigms, storytelling techniques, and the ways that media industries engage with important cultural, political and technological changes in American society.
Throughout the semester, we compare different critical frameworks used to discuss the history of the Hollywood Studio System such as media industry studies, genre and auteur theory, and celebrity studies. We apply these wide-ranging methods to a series of overlapping historical case studies on topics including F.W. Murnau, John Ford at Fox, and the FOX network’s efforts to reach underrepresented audiences. Screenings include Sunrise, How Green Was My Valley, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, M*A*S*H, The Simpsons Movie, In Living Color, and Star Wars. Alex Kupfer.
Prerequisite(s): FILM 175 or FILM 210 for students registering for FILM 282. MEDS 160 for students registering for MEDS 282.
Two 75-minute periods accompanied by film screenings.
|
| |
-
MEDS 286 - Gaming Antiquity: Interactive Historical Fiction and Classical Athens Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 286 ) Have you ever experienced the feeling of being joyfully lost in another world? Maybe you felt this sensation when reading Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, or perhaps you experienced it while creating your own work of art? In this course you have the opportunity to evoke this sense of immersion by crafting your own interactive historical fiction in the form of a digital role-playing game set in classical Athens. We begin by reading Mary Renault’s classic of historical fiction, The Last of the Wine, and exploring how she so effectively conjures the world of 5th-century Athens. You then begin working in teams to craft your own historical fiction in the form of a playable ‘quest’ designed within the framework of a tabletop role-playing game. For your culminating project you craft a digital version of your quest by ‘modding’ (modifying) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This course aims to develop your creative, technical and analytical capacities all at once by challenging you not just to develop a playable historical fiction set within the ancient world, but also to confront the difficult questions of adaptation posed by the disturbing realities of antiquity, like patriarchy, pederasty and slavery. No experience in Computer Science is necessary to enroll in this course.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 289 - Homer’s Odyssey: From Oral Composition to Digital Editions Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 289 ) In this course we consider the long history of Homer’s epic poem from its beginning as an oral composition in Archaic Greece to its current manifestations in digital editions. Along the way we look at papyrii, medieval manuscripts, early print editions, examples of fine printing and contemporary versions. As we consider the history of the poem we also study the poem itself and explore the ways that its meaning has also been transformed through time. Among the issues we consider are orality and oral cultures, the advent of writing, the development of the text and the influence of technology. We examine materials in Greek, Latin, and English though no knowledge of the ancient languages is required. The Archives and Special Collections Library, with its rich collection of primary sources, will serve as our laboratory. Rachel Friedman and Ronald Patkus.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 290 - Field Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
|
| |
-
MEDS 298 - Independent Study Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
|
Media Studies: III. Advanced |
| |
-
MEDS 300 - Senior Project Preparation Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
The Senior Project may be a full-length thesis or a (multi)media project. During the fall semester, students carry out the following independent work under the supervision of the Program Director and participating faculty: formulating a project topic; identifying suitable faculty advisors; writing a project proposal and bibliography; presenting the proposal at a poster event; and developing a work plan. The program faculty.
|
| |
-
MEDS 301 - Senior Project Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Students carry out the Senior Project during the spring semester, under the supervision of their two project advisors. All students present their projects at a public symposium at the end of the semester. The projects become part of a permanent Media-Studies archive. The program faculty.
|
| |
-
MEDS 302 - Adaptations
1 unit(s)
(Same as CLCS 302 and ENGL 302 ) If works of art continue each other, as Virginia Woolf suggested, then cultural history accumulates when generations of artists think and talk together across time. What happens when one of those artists switches to another language, another genre, another mode or medium? In the twenty-first century we may reframe Woolf’s conversation in terms of intertextuality—art invokes and revises other art—but the questions remain more or less unchanged: What motivates and shapes adaptations? What role does technology play? Audience? What constitutes a faithful adaptation? “Faithful” to what or whom? In this course we consider the biological model, looking briefly at Darwin’s ideas about the ways organisms change in order to survive, and then explore analogies across a range of media. We’ll begin with Virgil’s Georgics; move on to Metamorphoses, Ovid’s free adaptations of classical myths; and follow Orpheus and Eurydice through two thousand years of theater (Euripides, Anouilh, Ruhl, Zimmerman); painting and sculpture (Dürer, Rubens, Poussin, Klee, Rodin); film and television (Pasolini, Cocteau, Camus, Luhrmann); dance (Graham, Balanchine, Bausch); music (Monteverdi, Gluck, Stravinsky, Birtwistle, Glass); narratives and graphic narratives (Pynchon, Delany, Gaiman, Hoban); verse (Rilke, H.D., Auden, Ashbery, Milosz, Heaney, Atwood, Mullen, Strand); and computer games (Battle of Olympus, Shin Megami Tensei). During the second half of the semester, we investigate other adaptations and their theoretical implications, looking back from time to time at what we’ve learned from the protean story of Eurydice and Orpheus and their countless progeny. M. Mark.
Not offered in 2017/18
One 3-hour period.
|
| |
-
MEDS 310 - Senior Seminar Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Special topics course for all senior Media Studies majors, providing a capstone experience for the cohort. This course is taught in the fall semester each year.
Topic for 2017/18a: The Hands of Media. The capstone seminar for Media Studies aims to consolidate our majors’ core coursework in theory and praxis with an eye to giving them useful tools for the critical making of their senior projects. Taking the human hand as our guiding metonymic thread, we read a wide array of ancient and modern texts that interrogate the relationship between thinking and grasping, drafting and dwelling, making (poiesis) and touching (aesthesis), manual and intellectual labor, authenticity (the handmade) and reproducibility (the ready-to-hand), the human and the inhuman, the material and the virtual. We devote particular attention to the reemergence of the hand in our contemporary moment: the era of screen capitalism. The rise of artisanal foods and spirits, the popularity of bespoke design in the creative economy, the use of critical design in oppositional media interventions, the expanding adoption of design thinking in universities and corporations: these assorted trends seem to point to a renewed focus on making in our culture. What do these dexterous ventures have to tell us about our media ecology? about our relationship to the recycled stories, images, and objects we live with? about our “reality hunger” and dreams of transformation? Class assignments incorporate design methods that accentuate process: immersive listening, collaboration, prototyping, failing, testing, and more. The pedagogical goal of the seminar is not to provide students arts-and-crafts skills, but to activate their preferred creative-critical medium of expression - for example, writing - in an expanded field of possibilities, one that is mindful of our embodiment, our being-with-others, and our irreducible desire for something new. Heesok Chang.
Prerequisite(s): MEDS 250 or MEDS 260 .
One 2-hour period.
|
| |
-
MEDS 351 - Language and Expressive Culture
1 unit(s)
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MEDS 352 - The City in Fragments
1 unit(s)
(Same as URBS 352 ) In this seminar, we use the concept of the fragment to explore the contemporary city, and vice versa. We draw on the work of Walter Benjamin, for whom the fragment was both a central symptom of urban modernity and a potentially radical mode of inquiry. We also use the figure of the fragment to explore and to experiment with the situationist urbanism of Guy Debord, to address the failure of modernist dreams for the city, and to reframe the question of the “global” in contemporary discussions of global urbanization. Finally, we use the fragment to destabilize notions of experience and evidence—so central to positivist understandings of the city—as we make regular visits to discover, as it were, non-monumental New York. Readings include works by Walter Benjamin, Stefano Boeri, Christine Boyer, Guy Debord, Rosalyb Deytsche, Paul Gilroy, Rem Koolhaas, Henri Lefebvre, Thomas Lacquer, Saskia Sassen, Mark Wigley, and others. Lisa Brawley, Heesok Chang.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MEDS 356 - Culture, Commerce, and the Public Sphere
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 356 ) This course examines the culture and politics of the public sphere, with an emphasis on the changing status of public spaces in contemporary societies. Drawing upon historical and current analyses, we explore such issues as the relationship between public and commercial space and the role of public discourse in democratic theory. Case studies investigate such sites as mass media, schools, shopping malls, cyberspace, libraries, and public parks in relation to questions of economic inequality, political participation, privatization, and consumer culture. William Hoynes.
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MEDS 364 - Seminar in Twentieth Century and Contemporary Art Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 364 ) Topic for 2017/18a: The Moving Image: Between Video and Experimental Curating. Already by 1930 experimental film had tested the boundaries for the exhibition of works of art; when video built on that foundation thirty years later, the borders were again expanded. Moving image and radical exhibition formats would continue to evolve in tandem, becoming a succession of inspirations and experiments. The seminar studies these as theoretical, practical and perceptual questions posed in fact since the invention of cinema; case studies from past and present are compared; the seminar plans and executes curatorial experiments of its own. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor
One 2-hour period.
|
| |
-
MEDS 376 - Computer Games: Design, Production and Critique Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as CMPU 376 ) Investigates all stages of the game development process, including conception, design, physical and digital prototyping, implementation and play-testing, among others. The course emphasizes the integration of formal, dramatic and dynamic game elements to create a specific player experience. The course also examines various criteria and approaches to game critique, including issues of engagement, embodiment, flow, and meaningful play. Course work includes a series of game development projects carried out in groups, along with analysis of published games and readings in critical game-studies literature. No previous experience in media production or computer programming is necessary. Thomas Ellman.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 379 - Computer Animation: Art, Science and Criticism
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 379 , CMPU 379 , and FILM 379 ) An interdisciplinary course in Computer Animation aimed at students with previous experience in Computer Science, Studio Art, or Media Studies. The course introduces students to mathematical and computational principles and techniques for describing the shape, motion and shading of three-dimensional figures in Computer Animation. It introduces students to artistic principles and techniques used in drawing, painting and sculpture, as they are translated into the context of Computer Animation. It also encourages students to critically examine Computer Animation as a medium of communication. Finally, the course exposes students to issues that arise when people from different scholarly cultures attempt to collaborate on a project of mutual interest. The course is structured as a series of animation projects interleaved with screenings and classroom discussions. Thomas Ellman, Harry Roseman.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 2-hour periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 380 - Special Topics in Media Studies
1 unit(s)
Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MEDS 381 - Ideas, Sound, and Story: Podcast Production Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 381 ) This is a course on narrative audio production that focuses on the study and production of various nonfictional genres in the American podcasting landscape, including audio documentaries, investigative reporting, confessionals, art pieces, storytelling for academic purposes, and others. Students learn the craft of audio production from getting tape, tape-logging, writing for audio, story and tape-editing, and sound-tracking. Students complete various technical assignments, and submit a final 10-minute piece, with regular progress graded throughout. In order to model the highly competitive nature of the podcasting production space today, students must be highly-motivated, highly-organized, and grading is very rigorous, with the highest of standards and strict deadlines. Barry Lam.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
|
| |
-
MEDS 382 - The Arts of Silence Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Is silence the opposite of sound? Is it the space between sounds? Is sound an interruption of silence? Can silence be audible, visible, palpable, spiritual? How and what does it signify? The composer John Cage famously claimed that there is no such thing as silence. This course tests that notion by exploring the theory and practices of silence across a range of arts, including rhetoric, literature, comics, film, drama, music, and meditation. Leslie Dunn.
Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.
Two 2-hour periods.
|
| |
-
MEDS 385 - Media and War Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Senator Hiram Johnson’s 1917 remark “The first casualty when war comes is truth” is often repeated. But the processes through which (mis)information and images circulate in wartime are less well known. This course explores the role of popular media in the production and circulation of knowledge about war. Drawing on both news and entertainment media, we examine how war is represented and remembered in various media, including newspapers, photographs, radio, television, film, and online. Through a series of historical and contemporary case studies, we explore topics such as the practices of the war correspondent, strategies of news management by military planners, the relationship between media images and public attitudes toward war, media as a propaganda tool, and the role of popular media in constructing and contesting national myths and memories of war. William Hoynes.
Prerequisite(s): MEDS 160 or permission of the instructor.
|
| |
-
MEDS 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 or 1 unit(s)
|
Medieval/Renaissance Studies: I. Introductory |
| |
-
MRST 101 - Civilization in Question Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as CLCS 101 and GRST 101 ) In the past, college curricula in this country were often organized around the idea of the “Great Books” of “Western Civilization.” Today though, the very idea of a Western literary canon has been challenged as a vehicle for reinforcing questionable norms and hierarchies and silencing other important perspectives. In this class we read well-known ancient, medieval and Renaissance texts with a view to how they themselves question the civilizations from which they emerge. A unique feature of this class is that it is taught by faculty from three different disciplines who bring a variety of interpretive practices to bear on the texts. This creates a classroom environment in which dialogue is the means to discovery. Students are encouraged to be part of the conversation both during class and in weekly discussion sections. Readings may include such authors as Homer, Aeschylus, Plato, Augustine, Chretien de Troyes, and Machiavelli. Nancy Bisaha, Rachel Friedman, and Christopher Raymond.
Two 75-minute periods plus extra periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 116 - The Dark Ages Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 116 ) Was early medieval Europe really Dark? In reality, this was a period of tremendous vitality and ferment, witnessing the transformation of late classical society, the growth of Germanic kingdoms, the high point of Byzantium, the rise of the papacy and monasticism, and the birth of Islam. This course examines a rich variety of sources that illuminate the first centuries of Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, and early medieval culture showing moments of both conflict and synthesis that redefined Europe and the Mediterranean. Nancy Bisaha.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 117 - High Middle Ages, 950-1300
1.0 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 117 ) This course examines medieval Europe at both its cultural and political height. Topics of study include: the first universities; government from feudal lordships to national monarchies; courtly and popular culture; manorial life and town life; the rise of papal monarchy; new religious orders and spirituality among the laity. Relations with religious outsiders are explored in topics on European Jewry, heretics, and the Crusades.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 159 - Blood and Faith: The St. Bartholomew’s Massacre in Context
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 159 ) On August 24, 1572, Catholic troops slaughtered nearly 3,000 Protestant men and women who had arrived in Paris to attend the marriage between the future Henry IV and Marguerite de Valois, sister of Charles IX. It was the most dramatic episode of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) during which 2-4 million Catholics and Protestants died. This course examines the origins of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre coming out of the Protestant Reformation. Like the larger war, the massacre was not simply initiated by kings and nobles but featured ordinary subjects who sought to defend and define their community. We look at how the war was fought not just with weapons but words, featuring a trip to Special Collections. Throughout the course, we examine the relationship between politics and religion, between faith and community, issues that remain relevant today. Sumita Choudhury.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 175 - The Italian Renaissance in English Translation
1 unit(s)
(Same as ITAL 175 ) In this course we examine the notion of selfhood as it first appears in the writings of early humanists (XIV century), Renaissance authors (XVI century) and works of contemporary visual artists. Cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, and gender issues are investigated through the reading of literary and theatrical masterpieces and their influence on visual artists like Botticelli, Raphael, and others. We read in English translation excerpts from Petrarch (Canzoniere and Letters), Boccaccio (Decameron), poems and letters by women humanists (Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele, Laura Cereta), Machiavelli (The Prince), Castiglione (The Book of the Courtier), Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco (Poems). In order to foster the student’s self-awareness and creativity, journaling, experiential practices, and a creative project, based on the course content, are included. Eugenio Giusti.
May not be counted towards the Italian major. Satisfies college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
Medieval/Renaissance Studies: II. Intermediate |
| |
-
MRST 202 - Thesis Preparation Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
|
| |
-
MRST 220 - Medieval and Renaissance Culture Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Topic for 2017/18b: Detectives in the Archive: Reading Medieval and Renaissance Texts. Study of manuscripts of various types, from late antiquity to the early modern period. The course includes guest lectures by Vassar faculty and other experts, a field trip, and direct work with manuscripts from Vassar’s collection. The course serves as a de facto survey of medieval and renaissance culture. Marc Epstein and Ronald Patkus.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 223 - The Founding of English Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 223 ) These courses, ENGL 222 and 223, offer an introduction to British literary history through an exploration of texts from the eighth through the seventeenth centuries in their literary and cultural contexts. ENGL 222 begins with Old English literature and continues through the death of Queen Elizabeth I (1603). ENGL 223 begins with the establishment of Great Britain and continues through the British Civil War and Puritan Interregnum to the Restoration. Critical issues may include discourses of difference (race, religion, gender, social class); tribal, ethnic, and national identities; exploration and colonization; textual transmission and the rise of print culture; authorship and authority. Both courses address the formation and evolution of the British literary canon, and its significance for contemporary English studies.
Topic for 2017/18b: From the Faerie Queene to The Country Wife: Introduction to Early Modern Literature and Culture. This is a thematically organized “issues and methods” course grafted onto a chronologically structured survey course of early modern literature and culture. Its double goal is to develop skills for understanding early modern texts (both the language and the culture) as well as to familiarize students with a representative selection of works from the mid-1500s through the late 1600s. With this two-pronged approach, we will acquire an informed appreciation of the early modern period that may well serve as the basis for pursuing more specialized courses in this field. We explore a great variety of genres and media, including canonical authors such as Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton, but we also attend to less well-known authors, many of them women, through whose writings we can achieve a more nuanced and complex understanding of the times. By paying special attention to correlations between literature and other discourses, as well as to issues of cultural identity and difference based on citizenship, class, ethnicity, gender, geography, nationality, race, and religion, we engage early modern literature and culture in ways that are productive to the understanding of our own culture as well. Zoltán Márkus.
Please note that ENGL 222 is not a prerequisite for this course; it is open to all students, including freshmen.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 235 - Old English Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 235 ) Introduction to Old English language and literature. Mark Amodio.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 236 - Beowulf Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 236 ) Intensive study of the early English epic in the original language. Mark Amodio.
Prerequisite(s): ENGL 235 or demonstrated knowledge of Old English, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
|
| |
-
MRST 275 - Roots and Branches: Italian Renaissance Authors and Their Impact on Early Modern Western Culture
1 unit(s)
(Same as ITAL 275 ) The works of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and Giovanni Boccaccio, arguably the greatest authors of Italian Humanism, had a lasting impact on early modern western culture, from the literary, to the philosophical, from the theatrical to the visual. In this course we explore the ways in which Petrarch’s poetic style (Canzoniere) and epistolary writing (Familiar and Seniles Letters) become a canon for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian and European poets (including William Shakespeare), and such essayists as Michel de Montaigne. Boccaccio’s invention of the novella genre and the writing of the Decameron inspired not only contemporary and Renaissance authors like Geoffrey Chaucer and Marguerite of Navarre, but also theatrical production of the period (Bibbiena, Machiavelli, Shakespeare. Boccaccio’s erudite catalogue of famous women (De Mulieribus Claris) can be read as partial subtext to Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, and the iconography of Renaissance visual artists, like Botticelli and Titian, can be explored as based on Petrarch’s and Boccaccio’s texts. Conducted in English.
Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. May be counted towards the Italian major.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 290 - Field Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
|
| |
-
MRST 298 - Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
|
Medieval/Renaissance Studies: III. Advanced |
| |
-
MRST 300 - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
An interdisciplinary study written over two semesters under the supervision of two advisors from two different disciplines.
Yearlong course 300-MRST 301 .
|
| |
-
MRST 301 - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
An interdisciplinary study written over two semesters under the supervision of two advisors from two different disciplines.
Yearlong course MRST 300 -301.
|
| |
-
MRST 302 - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
An interdisciplinary study written during one semester under the supervision of two advisors from two different disciplines.
|
| |
-
MRST 323 - Intersections in Music and Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ITAL 323 and MUSI 323 ) Topic for 2017/18b: The Italian Madrigal, Music and Poetry in the Renaissance. This course examines the history of the sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century Italian madrigal and related secular forms, with close attention to the varieties of Italian poetry that composers set to music throughout the madrigal’s lengthy history. In particular, we consider the madrigalists’ responses to Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, and Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido. The course also examines the role of less exalted poetry (“poesia per musica”) in the genre’s history. Brian Mann.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 ; MUSI 205 ; MUSI 246 /MUSI 247 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MRST 339 - Shakespeare in Production
1 unit(s)
(Same as DRAM 339 ) Students in the course study the physical circumstances of Elizabethan public and private theaters at the beginning of the semester. The remainder of the semester is spent in critical examination of the plays of Shakespeare and several of his contemporaries using original staging practices of the early modern theater. The course emphasizes the conditions under which the plays were written and performed and uses practice as an experiential tool to critically analyze the texts as performance scripts. Denise Walen.
Enrollment limited to Juniors and Seniors.
Not offered in 2017/18.
One 3-hour period.
|
| |
-
MRST 341 - Studies in the Renaissance Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 341 ) Intensive study of selected Renaissance texts and the questions they raise about their context and interpretation.
Topic for 2017/18b: Sex and the City in 1600: Gender, Marriage, Family, and Sexuality in Early Modern London. This course explores everyday life in the rapidly expanding early modern metropolis of London. We pay special attention to religious, social, legal as well as informal control mechanisms that influenced issues of gender, marriage, and sexuality in various layers of London society. We anchor our investigations in a handful of plays (mainly city comedies) by Beaumont, Dekker, Jonson, Marston, Middleton, and Shakespeare, but also discuss ballads, homilies, conduct books, legal and travel narratives, pamphlets and treatises, literary works by female authors, and other literary and non-literary texts. Zoltán Márkus.
One 2-hour period.
|
| |
-
MRST 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
|
Music: I. Introductory |
| |
-
MUSI 101 - Fundamentals of Music Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
A beginning study of the elements of music including notation, rhythm and meter, scales and modes, intervals, melody, chord progression, musical terms, and instruments. To facilitate reading skills, class exercises in ear training and sight singing are included. May not be counted in the requirements for concentration. Brian Mann, Michael Pisani.
Open to all classes. Previous musical training unnecessary.
|
| |
-
MUSI 105 - Harmony Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A study of tonal harmony as found in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Primary emphasis is on writing, including harmonization of bass lines and melodies; analysis of representative examples and ear training. Kathryn Libin, Brian Mann, Táhirih Motazedian.
Prerequisite(s): each student must demonstrate to the instructor a familiarity with treble and bass clef notation, scales, and basic rhythmic notation.
Open to all classes.
Yearlong course 105/MUSI 106 .
|
| |
-
MUSI 106 - Harmony Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
A study of tonal harmony as found in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Primary emphasis is on writing, including harmonization of bass lines and melodies; analysis of representative examples and ear training. Kathryn Libin, Táhirih Motazedian.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 or successful completion of departmental advanced placement exam at beginning of fall semester.
Open to all classes.
Yearlong course MUSI 105 /106.
|
| |
-
MUSI 125 - The Sound of Space: Intersecting Acoustics, Architecture and Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 125 and PHYS 125 ) The disciplines of acoustics, architecture, and music are often treated in isolation, resulting in the loss of many synergistic connections. This course will bring these three different but intersecting disciplines together in an exciting new way through a collaborative team-teaching process. The course will explore the physical nature of music in the built environment, focusing on the generation, transmission, and reception of music in a variety of spaces across campus. An introduction will first be given for each discipline, then the intersections of these seemingly disparate, yet closely related fields will be studied through a combination of lecture, group discussion, and hands-on investigation. Student teams will adopt a key acoustical space on campus, which they will present during a processional performance by a Vassar choral group open to the public at the end of the semester. David Bradley, Christine Howlett, and Andrew Tallon.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MUSI 135 - The International Phonetic Alphabet
0.5 unit(s)
An introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Geared toward students of voice, choir, and choral conducting. Christine Howlett.
First six-week course.
Alternate years. Not offered in 2017/18.
|
| |
-
MUSI 136 - Introduction to World Music Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ASIA 136 ) This course examines the development and practices of musical styles in diverse locales around the world from an ethnomusicological perspective. We study the intersection of musical communities and social identity/values, political movements (especially nationalism), spirituality, economy, and globalization. We explore these general issues through case studies from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Justin Patch.
This course is open to students with or without musical training.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MUSI 140 - Introduction to Western Art Music Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A study of selected topics in the history of Western music.
Topic for 2017/18a: Classical Music at the Crossroads. This course examines two pivotal moments in the history of European music: the rise of the Classic style, as epitomized in the works of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven; and the crisis of early modernism in the years preceding the First World War. Brian Mann.
Open to all classes. Previous musical training not required. May not be counted in the requirements for concentration. Music 140 is not required for MUSI 141 , therefore these two courses may be taken in any order.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
-
MUSI 141 - Introduction to Western Art Music
1 unit(s)
Open to all classes. Previous musical training (or ability to read music) not required. May not be counted in the requirements for concentration. MUSI 140 is not required for Music 141, therefore these two courses may be taken in any order. Brian Mann.
Not offered in 2017/18.
Two 75-minute periods.
|
| |
|
Music: II. Intermediate |
| |
-
MUSI 201 - Opera Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A study of the history, style, drama, and music in selected operatic masterworks from 1600 to the present. Michael Pisani.
Prerequisite(s): one unit in one of the following: art; drama; Italian, French, German, or English literatures; music; or permission of the instructor.
|
| |
-
MUSI 202 - Black Music Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AFRS 202 ) An analytical exploration of the music of certain African and European cultures and their adaptive influences in North America. The course examines traditional African and European views of music performance practices while exploring their influences in shaping the music of African Americans from the spiritual to modern. Justin Patch.
|
| |
-
MUSI 205 - Advanced Harmony Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
A continuation of MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 , using more complex harmonic resources and analyzing more extended works. Táhirih Motazedian.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
|
| |
-
MUSI 206 - Musicianship Skills I Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
An aural-skills class based on diatonic melody and harmony. Class exercises include sight singing, ear training, clef reading, keyboard skills and basic conducting patterns. Ronald Bemrich.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 or permission of the instructor.
|
| |
Page: 1 <- Back 10 … 10
| 11
| 12
| 13
| 14
| 15
| 16
| 17
| 18
| 19
| 20
-> 22 |
|
|
Print this Page