65 courses with the subject FA, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
FA 103Fundamentals of Drawing and Composition3
Fundamentals of Drawing & Composition is an introductory studio drawing course with emphasis on learning to see and developing basic drawing skills using various media by employing fundamental design and composition concepts. In addition to technical skills, an exploration of creative thinking, problem solving, and critical analysis will be studied. During the semester, students will explore different drawing techniques and media. Students will be encouraged to develop an expression of individual style.
In Music Theory I, students will be introduced to higher-level musical language and grammar skills including musical notation, harmonic analysis, and part writing which will lead to a thorough understanding of music composition and music theory. Students will obtain and practice ear training skills and skills required for sight reading musical literature. They will learn about the development of music from an historical and cultural perspective and extend their musical awareness.
In Music Theory II, students will continue to develop their understanding of musical language and grammar, building on the foundational skills learned in Music Theory I. The course will focus on more advanced concepts, including chromatic harmony, modulation to closely and distantly related keys, and more complex forms of musical analysis. Students will further refine their ear training skills and sight-reading abilities, tackling more challenging musical passages and complex rhythmic and melodic structures. The curriculum will also explore the development of music historically and culturally, allowing students to deepen their historical and cultural understanding of music and compositional techniques.
This small group ensemble will introduce students to a variety of musical styles, musical techniques, history, theory, repertoire and more. During the semester, the ensemble will meet and discuss a wide range of music and include listening to great recordings as well as individuals that represent what the ensemble encompasses. In conjunction with private lessons, this class will also analyze what the ensemble music means and its various properties that makes it sound the way it does.
This instrumental ensemble will introduce students to a variety of musical styles, musical techniques, history, theory, repertoire, and more. During the semester, students will rehearse and discuss a wide range of music and include listening to recordings as well as individuals that represent what the ensemble encompasses. Students will also analyze what the ensemble music means and its various properties that make it sound the way it does. This course will be graded on a Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory basis.
This vocal ensemble will introduce students to a variety of musical styles, musical techniques, history, theory, repertoire, and more. During the semester, students will rehearse and discuss a wide range of music and include listening to recordings as well as individuals that represent what the ensemble encompasses. Students will also analyze what the ensemble music means and its various properties that make it sound the way it does. This course will be graded on a Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory basis.
This introductory studio course focuses on the basic techniques and materials of painting, employing a wide range of painting media and subject matter. Topics include basic color theory, materials, development of both representational and abstract approaches, and strategies for intuitive, individual response to subject matter and materials in directed assignments.
This course provides an introduction to the theory and application of photography as a fine art. Basic digital photographic skills and techniques are emphasized. Primary emphasis on the place of photography in art history, current art theory, and issues in photographic representation. This course requires the use of a laptop computer and appropriate software.
Students will learn to master the shapes and lines of the body, including muscles and bone structure. Movement, shape, speed line and mass will be reviewed and incorporated into the work in an attempt to redefine the human body as a much-needed subject of art making. Students will be required to participate actively in conceptualization and aesthetic critiques as well as discussions on technical issues. The class intends to create in the students a mature aesthetic vocabulary. Readings and other resources of study will be distributed, which will help foster a critical mind as well as a resource of intellectual, art making.
This course offers a progressive, hands-on introduction to the fundamental technical, conceptual, and aesthetic issues of jewelry and metalsmithing. Through a series of explorational assignments and technical exercises, students will be introduced to a broad range of processes, progressing from the simpler to the more complex. This class is highly structured with demonstrations and instruction each class time.
The intent of this course is to gain understanding and to recognize and appreciate the nature of clay and the processes used in working with the medium. The course will concentrate on the basic techniques of creating forms in clay through hand-building and the use of the wheel. Techniques of pinching, molding and slab will be employed to create a variety of projects. Students are expected to bring a sense of creativity and a level of enthusiasm that will complement the technical skills that will be learned, and are required to use patience and an innate sense of design to produce objects that are sophisticated, neat, well thought and creative.
The principles of ceramic materials, techniques, and design within a problem solving environment. Specific aesthetic and technical criteria will be examined and individual development will be emphasized. Health and safety concerns are stressed. Students will broaden their knowledge, skills and sensibilities in working with the ceramic medium. The course will introduce the second semester student to the various advanced techniques and concepts of using clay for creative expression. The student is expected to further develop their skills in various advanced forming methods. Increase their sensitivity to the materials, to aesthetic design, and to further develop individual and imaginative use of the materials.
How can depictions of the body in contemporary art be understood through both a medical and sociocultural lens? What research informs the manner in which different bodies are depicted in visual culture? How can we use this knowledge to better inform our analytic and empathetic approach to bodies through healthcare in a more holistic way? This course will explore these questions by examining how human psychology, physiology, and sociocultural factors have influenced artists working with the body. It will do so through a combination of lecture and hands-on instruction in ceramics.
This course is an introduction to sculptural approaches in a variety of media including the traditional and experimental. The aim of this course is to enable students to explore sculptural processes through the body and space, considering visual aesthetics. Students will be required to produce a new body of work and to talk and write about it. Emphasis will be on the integration of studio practice and critical thought.
Students will learn techniques of fine art printmaking, e.g. relief printing, monotype, intaglio, collagraph and collage. This course covers the distinctive nature of printmaking including: tools, inks, paper, plate preparation, registration, printing processes and qualities of prints e.g overlays, transparency, offset, and multiple images. The goal is for students to gain the skills and confidence to produce multiple images by hand printing and on a press while exploring personal visual expression. Hand printmaking techniques will engage the student with problem solving in drawing, design and color. Topics may include editions, suites and designation systems. Class sessions will comprise independent and collaborative printing and, lecture, demonstrations, discussion, and critique. Students will be introduced to the work of artists and the history/tradition of fine art prints.
Participation in this course will give students introductory hands-on experience in exhibit installation. Students will learn artwork handling, including conditioning, handling, measuring, hanging, lighting, and labels. This class is held in a lab format with supervised individual and group assignments. May be taken a maximum of three (3) times for a maximum of three (3) credits.
The arts are filled with obscure ideas, symbols and metaphors that can often be very difficult for the non-initiated to access or understand. This course will explore what is essentially the psychology of art itself, through the use of symbolism, metaphor and archetypes. Through the basic study of signs, or semiotics, students will develop an understanding of the meaning artists, and society, impart to the works themselves.
What is art? Why is some art considered beautiful? Or ugly? What are the criteria for judging art? This course will explore, and attempt to answer, these questions through the theories that define the arts, with close examination of specific works from both Western and non-Western cultures, from the ancient to contemporary eras.
This course focuses on the critical role of music in indigenous societies and its permeation into the mainstream. It will also study the varying functions of music within those societies and the intersection of tradition with innovation. Other areas of inquiry for the class include: how does music participate in identity politics? How does music serve as a social force across the globe? How does music connect our lives, our communities and the world in which we live? Special emphasis will be placed on the role of emerging technologies in globalization.
This course is designed to encourage students to think critically about popular music, as well as its social and historical meanings and contexts in relation to issues of identity. While the focus of the class is primarily on American popular music of the last century, European and non-Western forms will also be explored, with particular attention to: the role of pop music as a symbol of identity (i.e., race, class, gender, generational issues, ethnicity); the interaction of Colonial and Postcolonial traditions (European, African, Asian, and Native American traditions); and the influence of multimedia and technology (radio, video, internet).
This course is focused on diverse art historical traditions, not limited by interdisciplinary scope. Topics will include, but are not limited to: death; literature; medicine; magic and alchemy; opera; design; fashion; religion; technology. It is designed to complement an instructor’s specialized area of research and/or academic publication.
This course will introduce the difficulty globalization poses to canonical contemporary art from the 1970s to the present day, drawing attention to problems involved in defining what the term “contemporary art” actually means. This course spans aesthetic and ideological strategies that negotiate complex subject matter, ranging from gender, sexuality, and race, to war, colonialism, social media, and nature, among others. Students will develop the necessary tools to interpret, understand, and evaluate contemporary artistic practices in a global context.
Medical Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that attempts to explore, and provide insight into: the human condition, personal identity, ethical and moral responsibilities, as well as individual and collective rights related to personhood. This will be observed, analyzed and applied through the specific lens of the Fine Arts, and how the various disciplines within it are synthesized with medicine and healthcare.
This course explores the ways in which music participates in cultural life by engaging in the political process of nation building. In doing so, it examines the extent to which music has shaped individual and collective identities over time. The primary scope entails the long nineteenth century (or the French Revolution to the First World War) with a secondary emphasis devoted to the spread of these ideas across the Atlantic world in the early 20111 century. As such, this course provides a comprehensive critique of the ways in which music and the arts participated in the complex process by which subjects of a monarchy became citizens of a state.
Human identity is not a fixed or static property, but a fluid process that is continually under revision. As such, this course explores the ways in which music has participated in shaping unstable concepts of gender over time. The scope of the course spans the Ancient world to the contemporary moment. By examining the different roles and occupations of women over time, students are given an interdisciplinary context for comparing the many ways in which music has contributed to the performance of identity across Western cultures. As such, the course critiques the manner in when gender roles have served as mechanisms of power and sources of ongoing debate.
To treat or not to treat? That has been the question confronting medical practitioners and artists alike when it comes to the role of autism in the individual and society. This course examines the differing cultural responses to autism from the 18th century to the present, which vary from a source of pathology to a site of culture. In doing so, it traces the history of perspectives from clinical/therapeutic domains alongside the values enshrined in aesthetic movements such as serialism. Using case studies from music, literature, and film, students are asked to critique past cultural/medical models and relate them to contemporary approaches. FA 299 in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021
This course is as an introduction to the discipline of film studies, which encompasses film history, theory, and analysis from a global perspective. During the semester, we will consider a wide range of types of movies from classic and global art films to contemporary science fiction and documentary films. We will view work by Lucrecia Martel. Bong Joon-ho, Lynne Ramsay, Alfred Hitchcock, Bing Liu, Boots Riley, and Kelly Reichardt, amongst many others. We will consider how films are made, what they are telling us, and how to analyze them using a variety of modalities. This semester will consider issues such as sound, editing, cinematography, mise en scene , ideology, narrative forms, and the film industry. We’ 11 also pair our viewing and formal analysis with academic articles, interviews, and other writing that will contextualize the films within larger discussions in film history and theory and serve as the basis for our discussions.
Who actually owns traditional and social media companies and why does that matter? What are advertisers selling to us? How do they do it? What messages are they telling us? How do we define ourselves in the age of social media? Are we all stuck in our own curated social media bubbles? When you Google something, do you trust the results? Is Google’s algorithm biased? Every day, we are bombarded by a series of visual messages, social media notifications, television shows, news media, Y ouTube videos, and advertisements on a multitude of screens. When we want to know something, we Google it. This comprehensive media culture that we all inhabit profoundly influences what we consume, know, think, feel, and believe. It alters the way we feel about ourselves and others. Yet, we often don’t take the time to analyze this media and the environment it creates. In this course, we will take a critical approach to studying the media that surrounds us. You will develop an understanding of the profound role that digital media and infrastructures play within society and will acquire the skills to analyze, interpret, write, and speak about this dense media fabric in a more critical and effective manner.
This class will introduce you to some key movements and moments in the history of world film, from its origins at the end of the nineteenth century through to the present era. It will consider the earliest years of cinema; Russian montage and German Expressionism; the development of the classical Hollywood system and specific genres; the relationship of propaganda media to the Second World War; postwar art cinema; Italian neo-realism; the decline of the studio system and the French New Wave, and finally, the contemporary arthouse film. It will include comparative selections from other influential movements in international filmmaking including French actualites, German expressionism, Soviet montage, the international avant-garde, and Japanese, Italian and New Zealand cinema.
This course serves as an introduction to the vibrant world of contemporary global cinema. We will discuss the histories and development of various national and transnational cinema practices with close attention paid to contemporary social-political contexts. We will study the films of many well- known and emerging international directors such as Claire Denis (France), Lucrecia Martel (Argentina) Christian Petzold (Germany), Mattie Do (Laos), Annemarie Jacir (Palestine), Asghar Farhadi (Iran), Alankrita Shrivastava (India), Hawa Essuman (Kenya), Lee Kyoung-Mi (South Korea), and Jia Zhangke (China). In addition to a wide range of viewing, you will read a diverse array of academic articles, filmmaker interviews, and histories to contextualize the filmsyou have seen. Our discussions and analysis will focus on the development of film language and aesthetics as well as the formation of specific national film styles, genres, and cultures within a dynamic, transnational, and globalized world.
This course serves as an introduction to the vibrant world of contemporary American independent cinema. We will discuss the histories and development of independent cinema practices with close attention paid to the film business and industry, aesthetics, genre, narrative, film form, gender, sexuality, and race. We will study the films of many well-known indie directors such as John Cassavetes, Charles Burnett, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Sofia Coppola, Kelly Reichardt, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and Ava Duvernay. In addition to a wide range of viewing, you will read a diverse array of academic articles, filmmaker interviews, and histories to contextualize the films you have seen and provide a multi-faceted lens for film analysis.
How does representing a “real” event, story, person etc. through film change our relationship to reality? Does it get us any closer to the “truth?” How can documentary impact the world around us? This course serves as an introduction to the history and theory of international documentary film. During the semester, we will consider a wide range of cinematic, social, ethical, political, and ideological issues raised by documentary films and videos. These issues include the status of the documentary image, uses of editing, soundtrack, sound/image relationships, as well as the shaping of material into narrative and non-narrative forms. In sum, we will examine the different choices available to filmmakers who seek to represent reality as well as the implications of such choices. To do so, we’ll view a wide range of documentaries from all over the world, including the work of Kirsten Johnson, Ava Duvernay, Bing Liu, Ramona Diaz, Werner Herzog, Fredrick Wiseman, and Rithy Panh. We’ll also pair our viewing with academic articles, interviews, and other writing that will contextualize the visual material and serve as the basis for our discussions.
This course will introduce students to the methodologies of art history and to the historical development of the discipline itself. Students will learn to analyze and interpret art and visual culture through an array of lenses, including connoisseurship, iconography, psychoanalysis, formalism, social history, and feminism. In tracing the history of the discipline, students will critically engage with the ever-changing possibilities, limitations, biases, and priorities of the field.
What is modernity and what is “modern art”? This course will explore these questions through a global lens that will move beyond the traditional Eurocentric study of the new forms of art that developed from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. By examining diverse approaches to modernity from around the world, including East Asia, Latin America, India, Europe, and the United States, students will be able to critically consider themes of the local and global; tradition and avant-garde; and the art historical canon, within broader socio-political developments, such as the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, World War I, and World War II.
What is the relationship between art and everyday life? How have artists attempted to blur or fully collapse the distinction between the two? Focusing primarily on works made in the 20th and 21st centuries, this course asks what “life” and “art” refer to in any given work, which are two historically, contextually, and personally defined concepts. Students will study artists’ tactics and strategies for mediating between art and life from modernism to postmodernism by considering themes such as junk aesthetics, performance art, alternative art spaces and exhibition strategies, and social media.
This course is a survey of the history of video art, from the advent of the Portapak in the 1960s through today’s digital media landscape. In addition to the technical history of video art, students will be introduced to key figures, themes, and styles of video art, along with various methodological approaches to the interpretation of the medium. We will also trace the development of the medium alongside corresponding socio-political concerns, including surveillance, identity and representation, and mass media.
Is photography an artistic medium? A scientific tool? Or purely a documentary device? This course will historically contextualize these questions and the shifting debates over the definition and function of photography. We will survey the medium from its beginnings in Great Britain and France in the early nineteenth century through postmodernism and our digital moment. Course participants will learn about the key figures, artistic movements, and technical histories, and study various methodological approaches to the interpretation of photographs.
Mysticism and Modern Art shows the relationship between spiritual philosophies and the rise of abstract modern art. Mystics wrote copious doctrines, founded their own societies, and accumulated large followings, many of whom were artists and writers. These creators were propelled to paint and sculpt the unseen world. They channeled spirits in search of eternal truths, heralded scientific discoveries as proof of the spiritual dimension, and saw art as the visible revelation of the invisible world. As such, this course traces spiritualism and the visual arts through key movements from the 18th to the 21st centuries, including Romanticism, Symbolism, Expressionism, and Minimalism.
This course will introduce students to art traditions that result from cross-cultural encounters during the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Students will analyze the exchange of ideas and artistic techniques resulting from transoceanic and fluvial movements of scientists, missionaries, and merchants. Areas of interest will include port cities around the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Rim, and the Atlantic Ocean, as well as river networks that served the continental interiors.
In this course students will explore art and architectures of the Asia Pacific, including South Asia, Pacific Asia, and East Asia. Students will study the proliferation of ideas and visual expression through a range of media from two-dimensional painting to sculpture and the built environment. Students will connect these artistic movements to social and historical contexts including transitions of political and religious systems.
This course will explore the history of collections, museums, and exhibitions from a global perspective. From private cabinets of curiosity to extensive complexes such as the Smithsonian Institution, we will examine traditional exhibit spaces as well as alternative points of access, such as street art and digital exhibitions.
This course will begin with an introduction to basic concepts of architecture. From this introduction, students will examine how societies both respond to geographical conditions and assert their cultural values through the built environment. Selected structures will represent a historical and global range of architectural traditions and address domestic and public spaces. Previously offered as FA 279: Selections of Vernacular Architecture
Topics vary from semester to semester and will be announced with pre-registration information. A maximum of four credits of FA 285 may be earned toward degree requirements. Grading is on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
Special topics courses in the University’s Core Curriculum focus on a topic not currently offered as a standing course within a department’s contribution to the Core Curriculum. Special topics courses in the Core may be offered in two semesters (which do not have to be consecutive) with multiple offerings in each semester.
FA 320Art History Survey I: Prehistoric to Gothic3
This course is a general survey of art and visual culture from the prehistoric era to the 14th-century Gothic period. Students will be introduced to movements and styles from both Western and non-Western cultures. Emphasis will be on cultural/technical influences of art production; analysis of movements, styles, and works; comprehension of relevant theories; as well as basic identification of civilizations, eras, and movements.
This course is a general survey of art and visual culture from the early years of the Renaissance to the 21st century. Students will be introduced to movements and styles from both Western and non-Western cultures. Emphasis will be on cultural/technical influences of art production; analysis of movements, styles, and works; and comprehension of relevant theories. Art History Survey I is not a prerequisite for this course.
This course surveys the art of the United States from the Colonial era through the 21st century. We will consider broad stylistic tendencies in various regions and periods, and examine specific artists and works of art in historical and social contexts. Students will trace varying perspectives of an “American Art” through an array of themes, that may include the landscape (wilderness, Manifest Destiny, rural settlement, and urban development); the family and gender roles; the founding rhetoric of freedom and antebellum slavery; notions of artistic modernism through the dawn of the 20th century; and the national identity of “America” in today’s globalized world.
This course explores both traditional and nontraditional concepts and techniques of painting and the development of style. Topics may include color theory, two-dimensional design, and the nature of representation.
What is modernity? How did it affect the arts and science, forming new cohesions between the disciplines? What aspects of modernity are uniquely Western in their appeal; which are universal? This course is intended as an interdisciplinary exploration of the modernist crisis with a special emphasis on Viennese culture during the period 1880–1914. The topical survey will explore how the leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that forever changed how we think about the human mind. Our final stop will be the idea of globalization as we examine how our shifting worldviews have spawned new crises in meaning, the arts, and society.
This course explores the cognitive foundations of music through the intersection of psychology and music. Key topics include perceptual organization; biological responses to music; and music’s role in representing the shifting diagnostic categories of melancholy, madness, and depression. Particular emphasis is placed on investigating the ways in which various concepts of the mind influence our health from both historical and contemporary perspectives.
This course examines the historical and contemporary relationships between music and the environment using two primary discourses. First, it investigates the interplay of beauty, art, and culture from an evolutionary perspective. Taking inspiration from Darwin’s observation that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, it offers a survey of the various ways in which composers have responded to their environment and how, in turn, music has shaped the natural world. Second, it offers a critical examination of human ecology as it relates to the role music has played in our responses to climate change.
This course provides a basic framework for understanding the development of the vast treasury of psalms, hymns, canticles, spiritual songs, and other sacred music within the Christian tradition. Through primary readings and listening activities, we will address the nature of church music from both a historical and theological context. In addition, non-Western traditions will be examined alongside variable definitions of spirituality in practice. The course will conclude by exploring shifting boundaries between sacred and secular in popular culture.
This class surveys various answers to two broad and deceptively simple questions: What is music?, and Why does it matter? Both questions have spawned a significant discussions and a variety of answers. In this class, we will examine some of these answers with an eye towards helping students develop thoughtful views of their own as to the nature of music and its cultural value. These questions will be addressed with respect to a variety of musical styles, from “classical” music to jazz, pop and rock. No formal background in music or philosophy is required.
This course combines theory and practice with an active approach to early music. Through group performance and guided study, students will be immersed in music and culture of the Medieval, Renaissance and Early Baroque periods. The class meets each semester and performs throughout the academic year. Students may repeat the course in subsequent semesters, but the class may only be taken once to satisfy requirements for the Music and Culture Minor.
An intermediate level course that expands upon skills learned in Fundamentals of Drawing & Composition (FA 103) and other introductory art courses. Specialized drawing techniques in dry and wet media will be introduced as well as contemporary, experimental, and conceptual approaches and issues.
This course is an introduction to textiles that provides a broad view of the development, production and utilization of fabrics and the impact they have on design and construction. The characteristics of different fibers, yarns, fabrics, and finishes are investigated.
This course will focus on expanded definitions and practices of marking space, and aims to introduce, contextualize and explore a wide variety of drawing methods including the more traditional practice of “dragging a tool across a receptive background, usually a piece of paper”, as well as spatially focused practices, such as such as marking the landscape, as well as process-oriented methods that document the artist’s action and the passage of time.
This course aims to advance the building skills acquired in FA 380 (Jewelry Design I), and surveys a variety of casting and forming processes. The emphasis is on form and textural development. Integration of elements with other forms and processes is stressed. Technical information is introduced to increase the artistic range of the materials and techniques previously covered in Jewelry I, and will examine the interdependence of medium and image.
This course is the capstone of the painting track within the Studio Arts. Assignments are comprised of projects intended to bring out individual tendencies and potential combined with continued work from life in both the oil and more difficult watercolor mediums.
