Select Electives
Fall 2012, Spring 2012 & Fall 2011 Electives
See course schedule for full list of electives offered by the college.
Fall 2012 Electives
Queer Performance
What is the relation between performance and queerness? Why have so many queer projects taken up the language and practice of performance and theatricality? Is there something inherently theatrical, or performative, about queerness, or even sexuality? This course takes up these questions by examining different examples of historical and contemporary performance (including theatre, dance, and performance art) alongside excerpts from important texts in Queer Theory. The course culminates in the creation of original performance projects.
Sex, Gender, Queer Theory
Tina Takemoto
This seminar explores theories of gender, sexuality, and queer identity. We will examine some of the founding and contemporary philosophical, cultural, and critical texts in gender studies and queer theory. Topics for discussion will include: the historical emergence of the concept of sexuality, the authority of experience, theories of spectatorship, masquerade, gender performativity, race, transgender identity, disidentification, affect, utopia, failure, and desire. We will also investigate the significant role of queer identity in cultural production over the past thirty years in light of a broad range of LGBTQI artistic and erotic practices. Course reading will include texts by Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Douglas Crimp, Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz, David Eng, Jay Prosser, Sandy Stone, Jack Halberstam, Michael Warner, Lee Edelman, Gayatri Gopinath, and Heather Love. This course focuses on cultural diversity, critical analysis, and visual literacy. Students will also sharpen their research, verbal communication, and writing skills.
Spring 2012 Electives
Sex in American Cinema:
Cheryl Dunye
From the regulated images on the silver screen to the multi-million dollar porn industry, this course will examine the ways in which American film depicts sex. Weekly screenings and readings will serve as sites for critical engagement as a class. They will also support our analyses of how movies/audiences experience these cinematic and erotic representations.
Strategies: Aesthetics
Fred Dolan
This seminar offers an opportunity to read and evaluate a range theories pertaining to visual criticism with an emphasis on aesthetics and the philosophy of art. We will first discuss theories that introduce fundamental categories of the visual (such as presence and the gaze) and critique (such as structure and interpretation). We will then turn to theories that address fundamental questions concerning the nature of aesthetic experience and the concept of the artwork, including such notions as representation, form, expression, experience, and the artworld. Readings will include classical and modern sources (Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dewey) as well as more recent and contemporary writers (Danto, Dickie, Cavell, Goodman, Carroll, Wollheim, Nehamas, Noe). This seminar will provide students with an opportunity to refine their written and verbal communication skills and to sharpen their ability to analyze and criticize arguments.
On Beauty & Ugliness:
Claudia Bernardi
The principle of Beauty and Ugliness has never been absolute and immutable. Rather, it has taken on different aspects according to historical period, country, social strata and political ideology, among many other factors. The identification of the Beauty or Ugliness of the self, the interpretation of the Beauty or Ugliness of the “Other”, constitutes a mutant cartography of the definition of culture. This course will focus its investigation in the fields of art and aesthetics, politics, history, human rights and international jurisprudence.
Fall 2011 Electives
The Ecological Imagination:
Stuart Kendall
Ecology can be defined as a branch of biology that studies the interrelationships of living organisms and the environments in which they live. As a mode of systems based analysis ecology also describes an approach to our environment and often a mode of environmentalism. But ecological thinking isn’t just for biologists. Designers across the design disciplines interested in sustainability ground their work in ecological thinking. And artists interested in environmentalism and environmental activism use ecological thought to inform both the form and content of their works. This course will study the ecological imagination as it appears in and informs ecological thought, design and art. We will read ecological and environmental philosophy as well as examining works of art and design that exemplify diverse approaches to the problems of ecological thinking and the necessities of sustainability. This will be a course in ecological philosophy, design and aesthetic activism and a study of the presentation of our environment and environmentalism in contemporary culture.
