For Students: Past Courses
2012-13 Courses
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Explores the craft of documentary filmmaking beyond the basics. Students will produce fully-developed short digital video documentaries. -
The course will examine a number of influential theoretical texts on memory and look at selected case studies. -
This course examines theoretical work on religion and emotion to illuminate these questions, taking global cinema--films produced in the global age that image the interconnectivity of religious bodies--as a case study. -
The course invites artists, writers, activists, & cultural thinkers, those who want to know what it is to make things, spaces, situations, communities, allies, & trouble–without necessarily knowing how to draw, paint, sculpt, photograph, videotape, or film. -
The purpose of this course is to provide a critical and nuanced understanding of issues related to questions of gender and sexuality in the Muslim Middle East. -
This course will introduce students to the trans-disciplinary field of Visual Studies. -
This class will examine the intersection of religion, sex, and power, with a focus on contemporary American culture and politics.
2011-12 Courses
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This class will focus on the craft of documentary filmmaking. Students will learn the basics of video production and post-production, including use of HDV cameras, lighting and sound techniques, and nonlinear video editing using Final Cut Pro. -
This course is structured around Indian and British histories of the British Empire in India with a special focus upon the East India Company. -
An exploration of the rhetoric of visual culture through an examination of 20th century French critic Roland Barthes' many writings on photography, film, and what he calls the "civilized code of perfect illusions." -
This course will examine narratives written by women in the Arab Middle East from the early 20th century to the present. -
In this upper-level seminar, we will read these works closely and draw from their insights in our own examinations of primary sources.
2010-11 Courses
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Is cosmopolitanism just a utopic ideal or is it possible, in practice, to live and think beyond the boundaries of the nation state? If so, how and when? -
This class focused on the craft of documentary filmmaking. Students learned the basics of video production and post-production, including use of HDV cameras, lighting and sound techniques, and nonlinear video editing using Final Cut Pro. -
This course critically examined the photograph as artifact, art, evidence, and weapon. Reading anthropology, art criticism, and critical theory, they learned how to read photographs and to understand the roles they play and the goals they serve. -
This course introduced students to the thematic and stylistic breadth of documentary films from Latin America. They examined a series of questions related to the content, form and politics of documentary films. -
In this course, the specific mid-20th C movement called Conceptual Art was explored, as was its progenitors and its progeny. Students studied the founding manifestos, the canonical works and their critical appraisals, as well as developed tightly structured studio practica to embody the former research. -
An introduction to the trans-disciplinary field of Visual Studies, its methods of analysis and topical concerns. -
This course examines the histories of sex and gender in the Ottoman, Mughal (Indian), and Safavid (Persian) Empires, focusing mostly on the period between the 16th and 18th centuries. -
This seminar focuses on urban ethnography, examining the significance of place in daily practices, social relations, and broader social norms.
2009-10 Courses
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This course explored the challenge of truth-telling in documentary film and video. -
We examined the 19th C as an age of "ocularcentrism." At this time, a culture of looking emerged with the development of new visual technologies and the opening of art museums. -
In this course, the specific mid-20th C movement called Conceptual Art was explored, as was its progenitors and its progeny. Students studied the founding manifestos, the canonical works and their critical appraisals, as well as developed tightly structured studio practica to embody the former research. -
This course explored the intersection of race, gender, generation, and geography to look at the different ways African manhood has been theorized and represented over time and across disciplines. -
An exploration of the rhetoric of visual culture through an examination of 20th century French critic Roland Barthes' many writings on photography, film, and what he calls the "civilized code of perfect illusions." -
This course looked at art worlds past and present as contact zones bringing together vastly different systems of value and groups of people. They looked at a series of case studies in which Westerners and non-Westerners create art forms, practices and styles that were direct products of intercultural contact. -
This course covered topics in the intersection of religion and art in Europe and the U.S. from 1850 to the present. They examined how spirituality fueled new directions in Western artistic production, most notably abstraction, and explored art's role in visionary and contemplative experiences.
2008-09 Courses
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In this course, the specific mid-20th C movement called Conceptual Art was explored, as was its progenitors and its progeny. Students studied the founding manifestos, the canonical works and their critical appraisals, as well as developed tightly structured studio practica to embody the former research. -
This course looked at moments of both optimism and skepticism about the ability of the brush, the pencil, and the camera to capture what the eye could see and what it could not. -
This course examined contemporary attempts to revitalize and reaffirm art's relation to beauty, aesthetic pleasure, and seduction. -
This course explored the relationship between visual art, the supernatural, & the psychological during three distinct cultural moments: Spiritualism in Engliand in the 1850's & 60's, Symbolism and the occult in France in the 1890's, and Surrealism in France in the 1920's & 30's.