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Catalogue 2020-2021 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
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Mathematics and Statistics: III. Advanced Prerequisites for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , or permission of the department, unless otherwise indicated.
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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): for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , unless otherwise indicated.
Course Format: CLS
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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): for all advanced courses: MATH 220 and MATH 221 , unless otherwise indicated.
Course Format: CLS
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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 .
Course Format: CLS
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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.
Course Format: OTH
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Media Studies: I. Introductory |
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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. Alex Kupfer (a), Paulina Bren (b)
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 170 - Star Wars: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
According to Fred Botting, author of Gothic, “Postmodernism, emerging as a global aesthetic style at the end of the 1970s and associated with the wider transformations of modernity, seemed particularly hospitable to the resuscitation of gothic forms and figures.” The theatrical release of Star Wars in 1977 marked one such occasion. The film’s revolutionary blend of science fiction and fantasy is built upon a foundation of gothic tropes and devices from the dysfunctional families and Mephistophelean tempters of the 18th century to the Inquisition prisons and revolutionary anxieties of the 19th century. How might our contemporary understanding of the Star Wars canon develop if we view it through this critical lens that highlights psychological violence, transgression, and excess as a way of unbalancing the hierarchies of good and evil, free will and predestination, tyranny and liberty?
Together we examine the gothic elements of Star Wars across representational media (including films, storyboards, comics, propaganda posters, short stories, and toys) in order to better understand the ways in which Star Wars engages with the experience of (neo)Imperialism. The Skywalker saga projects a particularly gothic sense of loss and dislocation (of history, culture, identity, and autonomy) by displaying the terrors and traumas of colonization: subjugation, banishment, enforced assimilation, slavery, and genocide. As a paragon of political resistance to the patterns of retributive violence, Star Wars invites us to consider gothic fiction as a crucible for self-knowledge and deliberate action. Matthew Schultz.
Prerequisite(s): Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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Media Studies: II. Intermediate |
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MEDS 214 - Process, Prose, Pedagogy Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 214 ) An exploration of the intersections among language, form, genre, and medium, this course aims to deepen our appreciation for and understanding of multimodal authorship. To do so, we focus our critical gaze upon one of the more experimental periods of textual production: literary modernism. Together, we consider selections of poetry, short fiction, the novel, woodcut narratives, autobiography, letters, manifestos, essays, and film produced by a diverse range of authors that may include H.D. and Djuna Barnes, Mu Shiying and Mikhail Bulgakov, Max Jacob and Zora Neale Hurston––as well as more canonical figures like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. Our discussions center on the ways in which writing emerges from its immediate historical contexts, and also how genre and medium look beyond their present moment, revising models inherited from the past and anticipating future forms of expression. As such, we have the opportunity to produce both critical and creative writings throughout the term. Ultimately, this course helps us to better analyze and construct arguments about distinct types of texts through the sustained practice of close critical reading and recursive writing, and to sharpen our ability to facilitate dialogue about complex ideas and various modes of communication. Matthew Schultz.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 216 - Israeli Media Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as JWST 216 and RELI 216 ) This course provides students with an in-depth understanding of current political, social and religious developments in Israel by reading and analyzing Israeli media including newspapers, web sites, blogs, TV clips and more. Through the study of historical texts and current media, students gain an understanding of Israel’s complex multi-party political system, key political actors, the economic structure and the differences between the religious and political sectors in Israeli society.
Topic for 2020/21a: Negotiating Identity. How has identity in Israel has been constructed and deconstructed? Particular attention is paid to the recent emphasis on ‘hyphenated identities’ (like that of the “Arab Jew”). Key themes include ethnicity, gender, language, as well as political resistance and solidarity. The course explores how Israeli media has embodied or challenged social thought and perception, its major focus is upon contemporary cinema as a site of representation and expression. Sigal Yona.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 217 - Studies in Popular Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 217 and MUSI 217 )
Recommended: One unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
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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.
Prerequisite(s): One course in language, literature, culture, film, drama, or Asian Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Not offered in 2020/21.
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MEDS 220 - Medieval and Renaissance Culture
1 unit(s)
(Same as MRST 220 ) Topic for 2019/20b: 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.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 240 - Gender in Popular Media Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 240 ) Topic for 2020/21a: Through the analysis of a range of media including film, television, advertising, music and digital culture, along with the reading of a number of critical and theoretical texts, we interrogate the way that gender is constructed, represented and consumed in American popular media. An interdisciplinary combination of feminist theory, queer theory, media studies and cultural studies provide the tools for critical inquiry into the production and performance of gender and sexual identities and help us consider their various intersections with race, class, ethnicity and dis/ability. Students learn to meaningfully and critically engage with these popular forms to become discerning cultural consumers and creators. Anne Brancky.
Prerequisite(s): WMST 130 .
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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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, games and physical computing, user interface design. Students compose a formally sophisticated, rhetorically inventive “essay” in three medium specific idioms. They also are asked to determine how the three exercises go together, how they work as interlocking parts of a transmedia narrative or ensemble.
Topic for 2020/21a: Investigating critical media practice in the production of multi-media artifacts including sound, moving images, interactive maps and games. Course work is organized around the concept of “mapping” as a metaphor for many kinds of media production. The course also addresses themes of appropriation and remediation, the archive, popular memory; inclusion and exclusion. Tom Ellman.
Prerequisite(s): MEDS 160 or Permission of the Instructor
Two 2-hour periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 254 - Emotional Engagement with Film
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 ; for Film majors - FILM 175 or FILM 209 ; for Media Studies majors - MEDS 160 .
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 256 - American Television History Semester Offered: Spring
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 209 for students registering for FILM 256. MEDS 160 for students registering for MEDS 256.
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 260 - Media Theory Semester Offered: Spring
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. Eva Woods.
Prerequisite(s): MEDS 160 or permission of the instructor.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 264 - The Metropolitan Avant-Gardes Semester Offered: Spring
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.
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MEDS 265 - Modern Art and the Mass Media: the New Public Sphere Semester Offered: Fall
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. As a consequence, the physical spaces of culture would be reimagined and designed. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): ART 105 or ART 106 .
Two 75-minute periods and one film screening.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 268 - After 1968: Sustainable Aesthetics
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 268 or 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 or ART 106 .
Two 75-minute periods and one film screening.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 271 - Hello, Dear Enemy: Mounting an Exhibition of Picture Books on Experiences of War and Displacement Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as EDUC 271 , INTL 271 , LALS 271 and WMST 271 ) At a time when the world is witnessing the largest displacement of people since WWII, due in significant measure to armed conflict, this course examines select case studies (both past and present) of armed conflict and their consequences for children. Journalists, photographers and writers of young adult literature have done much to raise awareness about children and armed conflict, and to treat them in such a way that audiences develop understanding, empathy, and solidarity with children affected by armed conflict. A principal aim of the course is to study the topics of war and displacement, journalism and photography, and young adult literature, and then to mount an exhibition in the Collaboratory of photographs and books that will travel to area schools and libraries, where Vassar students serve as docents. Our work is enriched by study of human rights statutes and policy pertaining to children affected by armed conflict, as well as by interaction with visiting artists and educators. Tracey Holland
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 280 - The Book: A Global History Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course offers an historical view of books and printing from a global perspective. We begin with thematic discussions of early systems of writing, the ancient book, the medieval book, paper, bookbindings, printing, and illustration processes. We then examine the history of the book in particular places, starting with countries in Europe, and moving to other parts of the world, including Russia, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, and the United States. The course investigates not only the design and production of books around the world, but also their connection to society. The Archives & Special Collections Library with its rich holdings serves as a laboratory for the course. Guest speakers and one or more field trips enhance our study of key topics. Ron Patkus.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 285 - The Book in America Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 285 ) This course examines the history and influence of books and printing in American society from earliest times to the present. We touch on a range of topics, including the place of books in the colonial era and the new republic, the spread of printing technologies in the 19th century, the emergence of large publishing houses and rising rates of literacy, the role of libraries, bookstores, and book clubs, modernist publishing, the rise of the paperback, the work of private presses, artist’s books, and the effect of recent technologies on reading. Along the way we consider questions relating to the production, dissemination, and reception of texts. The Archives & Special Collections Library serves as a laboratory for the course. Guest speakers and one or more field trips enhance our study of key topics. Ron Patkus.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 287 - Toy Stories: Histories, Narratives, and Theories of Toys and Play Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as GERM 287 ) This course explores the development of the modern toy industry, beginning with the rise of mass-produced toys in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We examine the history of a range of iconic toys and games—for instance, Lego blocks, Barbie dolls, and Monopoly—within the wider discursive context that helps give them meaning. This includes not only advertisements, but also literary and cinematic texts ranging from the fairy tale by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Nutcracker and the King of Mice, to the Toy Story series and recent Lego films. We ask how toys and games propagate norms such as those of gender and ethnicity, and how narratives about toys and play promote but also subvert such values. Of special concern is the discovery and development in both literary and psychological texts of the concept of imaginative or make-believe play, and the ways in which toy makers lay claim to promoting this kind of play. In addition to analytic essays, assignments include drafting a concept for a new toy or board game. Elliott Schreiber.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 290 - Community-Engaged Learning Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: INT
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MEDS 298 - Independent Study Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Permission of the director required.
Course Format: OTH
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Media Studies: III. Advanced |
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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. Program Faculty.
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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. Program Faculty.
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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.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 303 - Senior Project Preparation Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
The Senior Project is a full length Thesis or a (Multi) Media Project. During the Fall semester, students write a Project Proposal and Bibliography, and complete a Chapter or a comprehensive Project Statement. In the Spring, students finalize the Senior Project under the supervision of Project Advisor. All students present their Projects in a Public Symposium at the end of the semester. The Projects become part of a permanent Media Studies Archive. The Department.
Yearlong course 303-MEDS 304 .
Course Format: INT
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MEDS 304 - Senior Project Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
The Senior Project is a full length Thesis or a (Multi) Media Project. During the Fall semester, students write a Project Proposal and Bibliography, and complete a Chapter or a comprehensive Project Statement. In the Spring, students finalize the Senior Project under the supervision of Project Advisor. All students present their Projects in a Public Symposium at the end of the semester. The Projects become part of a permanent Media Studies Archive. The Department.
Yearlong course MEDS 303 -304.
Course Format: INT
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MEDS 305 - Senior Project Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
The Senior Project is a full-length Thesis or a (Multi) Media Project. During the summer prior and Fall semester, students write a Project Proposal and bibliography, and complete a chapter or a comprehensive Project Statement under the supervision of the Project Adviser. The students finalize the Senior Project with the continued supervision of the Project Adviser to completion, which will then become part of a permanent Media Studies Archive. Dara Greenwood.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: INT
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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.
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. Eva Woods.
Prerequisite(s): MEDS 250 or MEDS 260 .
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 350 - Studies in Eighteenth-century British Literature Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Focuses on a broad literary topic, with special attention to works of the Restoration and eighteenth century.
Topic for 2020/21b: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). (Same as ENGL 350 )The author of A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), England’s greatest literary critic, and the founder of modern biography, Samuel Johnson had an immense impact on British literature. The purpose of this course is to read Johnson’s works, to learn about his life, and to consider his influence on some later writers—such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, and Cathleen Schine. Robert DeMaria.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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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.
Not offered in 2020/21.
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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 2020/21.
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MEDS 364 - Seminar in Twentieth Century and Contemporary Art Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as ART 364 ) Topic for 2020/21a: The World Picture: What defines a world? Increasingly the work of art is asked to take on this question, which has been the province of philosophy for centuries. This year the seminar looks at the way contemporary art has taken the idea of the world picture apart to produce a set of critiques and alternative visions so that the organization of the world’s aspects can be better considered. The question that haunted the twentieth century, what is a self? or, to put it slightly differently, what is a subject? has been transformed. The new questions turn on redefinitions of collectivity, or what is currently called self-organization. Molly Nesbit.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 371 - Fake News: Truth and Media in the Post-Fact Society Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as SOCI 371 ) The post-fact society, according to journalist Farhad Manjoo, is one in which people increasingly live in “divergent, parallel realities.” It is in the context of the post-fact society that President Donald Trump and his followers are able to decry any news that challenges his actions or worldview as “fake” and to offer up ideologically bolstering “alternative facts” in its place. While sensationalized, exaggerated, or false news is not new (think yellow journalism or tabloids like The National Inquirer), the advent of cable news, the 24-hour news cycle, and the Internet have led to the proliferation of multiple realities of fact, troubling public trust in news media and polarizing Americans politically. Drawing on media studies, the sociology of knowledge, and post-structuralist theory, this course examines the cultures of the new post-fact society including: fake news and alternative facts; news taste-makers such as Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson; algorithmic control of online media; conspiracy theories; and political satire. We consider questions such as: How does news media create and reinforce various political ideologies? Why do people look to news media to confirm or deny preexisting beliefs? Is journalism ever fully objective? If in fact there are multiple Truths, how do we as a society develop public trust and social solidarity? John Andrews.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 374 - Ideas, Sound, and Story: Podcast Production Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 374 and PHIL 374 ) 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 1-hour period.
Course Format: INT
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MEDS 376 - Computer Games: Design, Production and Critique
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.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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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.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Two 2-hour periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 382 - Decolonizing Digital Culture Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HISP 382 and LALS 382 ) Digital media are ubiquitous. Through them we communicate, inform ourselves, organize our lives, watch one another, self-soothe and invent ourselves. Digital media are both central to struggles for social justice and at the same time, in the hands of corporate and state agents, weapons against these struggles. This course explores how the history, physical infrastructure, political economy and symbolic and affective meanings in media-scapes across Latin America, the Caribbean, Mexico and Spain are crucial for understanding digital culture and its impact on us. Topics studied include Indigenous digital culture; digital literacy; fake news; social media and social movements; gendered, racialized and classed identities in online communities; (dis)embodiment; the networked self; and border surveillance technologies. We analyze a range of media texts including novels, films, theoretical essays, manifestos, archives and multi-media born-digital content. Taught in Spanish. Eva Woods.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 and one course above 216.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 385 - Media and War
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.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MEDS 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 or 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH
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Medieval/Renaissance Studies: I. Introductory |
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MRST 101 - Civilization in Question Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as CLCS 101 and GRST 101 )
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 103 - History of Western Philosophy: Medieval Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as PHIL 103 ) This course surveys roughly one thousand years of philosophical activity in the Middle Ages, encompassing the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions. Key authors include Augustine, Boethius, Ibn-Sīnā (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas. Christopher Raymond.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 116 - The Dark Ages
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.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
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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.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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Medieval/Renaissance Studies: II. Intermediate |
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MRST 202 - Thesis Preparation Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
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MRST 220 - Medieval and Renaissance Culture
1 unit(s)
(Same as MEDS 220 )
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 221 - Medieval Science and Technology Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 221 and STS 221 ) Science and technology: the very words seem synonymous with “modernity.” Yet, crucial developments in scientific knowledge and application occurred during the Middle Ages, forming the foundation for the Scientific Revolution. This interdisciplinary course offers an introduction to science and technology in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean world, exploring the influence of classical, East Asian, and Arab learning, and the rise of empiricism and experimentation. Through readings, discussions, and hands-on activities, we examine developments in monasteries, universities, castles, and farms. Topics may include beer making, beekeeping, alchemy, siege warfare, watermills, astrology, plagues, and medicine. Nancy Bisaha, Christopher Smart.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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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.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 236 - Beowulf Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ENGL 236 ) In-depth 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.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 246 - Music and Ideas I: Medieval and Early Modern Europe: The Power of Church and Court Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as MUSI 246 ) This course introduces major historical and intellectual ideas of music from the Ancient world through 1660. The focus is on essential repertoire as well as the cultures that fostered principal genres of sacred and secular music during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early Baroque. Brian Mann.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
Includes an additional listening/discussion section.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 282 - In and Out of Hell: Teachings for Today’s World in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Boccaccio’s Decameron Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as ITAL 282 ) Today’s news media defines our times as an ‘unprecedented challenge’. Undoubtedly thecombination of a pandemic, pervasive social and political unrest, and environmental crisis present a serious challenge, but today’s challenge is hardly ‘unprecedented’. Both our planet and humankind have faced, and overcome, even more dramatic challenges in the past. In this course we look at two literary masterpieces: Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. Written fifty years apart in a century that witnessed dramatic events like the Black Death, the Church’s Avignon Captivity, and Europe’s social and economic collapse, these works may offer valid teachings on how to cope with today’s challenges, both at the personal and social level. After an in-depth introduction to the time period and a detailed analysis of the nature and structure of the two works, we read selections of cantos from the Comedy and novellas from the Decameron that are particularly meaningful to our quest. We apply a wide range of strategies to experience, comprehend, interpret, and evaluate the chosen texts (i.e. progressive reading and imagery exercises). We emphasize inter-textuality to underline the authors’ different approach to similar issues, and the multiplicity of their teachings. In the last part of the semester, students conduct their own research on the works and present their results in oral and written form. The course is conducted in English. Eugenio Giusti.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 290 - Community-Engaged Learning
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: INT
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MRST 298 - Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH
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Medieval/Renaissance Studies: III. Advanced |
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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 .
Course Format: INT
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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.
Course Format: INT
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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.
Course Format: INT
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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.
Enrollment limited to Juniors and Seniors.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MRST 399 - Senior Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Course Format: OTH
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Music: I. Introductory |
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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. Alexander Bonus, Jonathan Chenette.
Open to all classes. Previous musical training unnecessary.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 105 - Music Theory I Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
The first class of a three-semester sequence devoted to detailed investigation of the fundamental elements of music, including harmony, melody, form, rhythm, meter, texture, and timbre. Skills include analysis, writing, analytical listening and singing, transcription, basic keyboard skills, and musical comprehension.
Alexander Bonus.
Prerequisite(s): Familiarity with music notation (bass and treble clefs), key signatures, and basic rhythmic notation.
Open to all classes.
Two 75-minute periods plus a weekly skills lab.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 106 - Music Theory II Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
The second class of a three-semester sequence devoted to detailed investigation of the fundamental elements of music, including harmony, melody, form, rhythm, meter, texture, and timbre. Skills include analysis, writing, analytical listening, and musical comprehension. Christine Howlette (lab), 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.
Two 75-minute periods plus a weekly skills lab.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 126 - Our bodies/Our selves: A Systematic Approach for Musicians to Improved Use of the Self Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
No matter what our level of proficiency as musicians, we use our bodies as instruments to sense, feel, think and act, whether we are making music or listening to it. In this course, we develop our somatic and proprioceptive awareness through movement, and by doing so increase our pleasure and ability to make music. Drawing from the Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement, Viewpoints, and Deep Listening methods, this six week course welcomes all levels of musician and sizes, shapes and kinds of bodies. All materials are provided. Students need to wear clothing that moves easily. Drew Minter.
Prerequisite(s): Students must have taken or be in the process of taking one Music course (applied lessons, classroom, or faculty-led ensemble).
First six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 135 - The International Phonetic Alphabet
0.5 unit(s)
An introductory study of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Students learn the sounds and symbols of IPA and apply these principles through written assignments and oral drills, with projects focused on the student’s area of interest. The study of IPA is particularly useful for students studying vocal/choral music, drama, languages, and phonetics. Christine Howlett.
First six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 136 - Introduction to World Music Semester Offered: Spring
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.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 188 - Duke Ellington: Life and Music
1 unit(s)
The subject of the course is the great jazz composer and bandleader Duke Ellington (1899-1974). As a world-renowned black musician from Washington, D.C., Ellington elevated jazz composition and arranging to a fine art, and he brought class and style to the performances of his band. We read about Ellington, listen to his music, view films in which he and his band are featured, and discuss his life. The writing assignments are focused on both biographical and musical issues, in which we explore ways to talk about the life and work of this remarkable creative artist. Alexander Bonus.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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Music: II. Intermediate |
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MUSI 201 - Opera
1 unit(s)
A study of the history, style, drama, and music in selected operatic masterworks from 1600 to the present.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in One of the following: art; drama; Italian, French, German, or English literatures; music; or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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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.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 205 - Music Theory III Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
The third class of a three-semester sequence devoted to detailed investigation of the fundamental elements of music, including harmony, melody, form, rhythm, meter, texture, and timbre. Skills include analysis, writing, analytical listening, and musical comprehension.Táhirih Motazedian.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 207 - Musicianship Skills I Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
An aural-skills class based on diatonic and chromatic melody and harmony. Class exercises include sight singing, ear training, clef reading, keyboard skills, score reading, improvised accompaniment, and basic conducting patterns. A continuation of skills acquired from 105/106 skills lab. Marija Ilic.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 208 - Musicianship Skills II Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
A continuation of MUSI 207 , developing aural, keyboard, and clef-reading skills to a higher degree of proficiency. Eduardo Navega.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 207 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 211 - Counterpoint Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
An in-depth study of modal and tonal counterpoint practices. Course work includes analysis and composition of motets, inventions, canons, and fugues. Tahirih Motazedian.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 213 - American Music
1 unit(s)
The study of folk, popular, and art musics in American life from 1600 to the present and their relationship to other facets of America’s historical development and cultural growth. Brian Mann.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in one of the following: Music; studies in American History, Art, or Literature; or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 214 - History of American Jazz
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 214 ) An investigation of the whole range of jazz history, from its beginning around the turn of the century to the present day. Among the figures to be examined are: Scott Joplin, “Jelly Roll” Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Thomas “Fats” Waller, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis. Alexander Bonus.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in one of the following: Music; studies in American History, Art, or Literature; or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 215 - Composition I Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Creative work in various contemporary idioms. Analysis of selected works; study of instrumental resources. Susan Botti.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
If a senior project in composition is planned, the student should elect Music 215/MUSI 216 in the sophomore year and MUSI 315 in the junior year.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 216 - Composition II Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Creative work in various contemporary idioms. Analysis of selected works; study of instrumental resources. Susan Botti.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 215 and permission of the instructor.
If a senior project in composition is planned, the student should elect MUSI 215 /216 in the sophomore year and MUSI 315 in the junior year.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 217 - Studies in Popular Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as AMST 217 and MEDS 217 ) Justin Patch.
Recommended: one unit in either Music, Sociology, or Anthropology.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 218 - Advanced Topics in World Music
1 unit(s)
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 136 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 219 - Electronic Music Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
A practical exploration of electronic music, composition, and production techniques. Compositional and creative aspects are emphasized with extensive lab time provided for student projects. No prior knowledge of computer music or programming is required. Drake Andersen.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 and MUSI 106 .
Yearlong course 219/MUSI 220 .
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 220 - Electronic Music Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
A practical exploration of electronic music, composition, and production techniques. Compositional and creative aspects are emphasized with extensive lab time provided for student projects. No prior knowledge of computer music or programming is required. Drake Andersen.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 219 .
Yearlong course MUSI 219 /220.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 231 - Women Making Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 231 ) A study of women’s involvement in Western and non-Western musical cultures. Drawing on recent work in feminist musicology and ethnomusicology, the course studies a wide range of music created by women, both past and present. It explores such topics as musical instruments and gender, voice and embodiment, access to training and performance opportunities, and representations of women musicians in art and literature. Kathryn Libin.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in Music, or Women’s Studies, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
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MUSI 232 - Faust, Music, and Romanticism
0.5 unit(s)
No literary text of the early Romantic era was read more avidly than Goethe’s Faust. After its publication in 1808, composers rapidly began setting it to music. In this six-week course, we begin with a close reading of Faust Part I (in English translation), then study musical interpretations of it by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Liszt, and others. Kathryn Libin.
Recommended: One course in Music or German.
First six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 233 - Sounds of Faith: Sacred Choral Music
0.5 unit(s)
The sound of massed voices creates a spiritual reverberation that composers have explored for worship, for celebration, and to reveal or reach the divine. In this six-week course, we examine sacred choral works by composers of the late 18th century, including Mozart, Haydn, and others. Kathryn Libin.
Recommended: one course in Music (especially MUSI 105 ).
Second six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 238 - Music in Film
1 unit(s)
(Same as FILM 238 ) A study of music in sound cinema from the 1920s to the present. The course focuses on the expressive, formal, and semiotic function that film music serves, either as sound experienced by the protagonists, or as another layer of commentary to be heard only by the viewer, or some mixture of the two. Composers studied include Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, Danny Elfman, and others, as well as film scores that rely upon a range of musical styles, including classical, popular, and non-Western. Specific topics to be considered this semester include music in film noir and the movie musical.
Prerequisite(s): One course in Music (not performance) or Film.
Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 246 - Music and Ideas I — Medieval and Early Modern Europe: The Power of Church and Court Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as MRST 246 ) This course introduces major historical and intellectual ideas of music from the Ancient world through 1660. The focus is on essential repertoire as well as the cultures that fostered principal genres of sacred and secular music during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early Baroque. Kathryn Libin.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
Includes an additional listening/discussion section.
Two 75-minute periods plus an additional listening/discussion section.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 247 - Music and Ideas II — Enlightenment and the Influence of Rationalism Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
A study of musical genres and trends over the course of the “long eighteenth century” from 1660 to 1830. The course explores significant shifts in musical language from the high Baroque through the age of revolution and early Romanticism, as revealed in great works from Purcell through Beethoven. Kathryn Libin.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 or permission of the instructor.
Includes an additional listening/discussion section.
Two 75-minute periods plus an additional listening/discussion section.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 248 - Music and Ideas III — Modernism and its Challenges Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course begins with progressive composers Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner and traces the development of their schools of thought through the late nineteenth century, the rising importance of popular song and jazz in the twentieth century along with major composers who have found new expression within classical traditions, and “postmoderns” who have worked to bridge genres. Alexander Bonus.
Prerequisite(s): MUSI 105 /MUSI 106 and MUSI 247 , or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods plus an additional listening/discussion period.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 251 - Deconstructing Pop: Theory about Popular Music
0.5 unit(s)
“Pop” offers upper-level students who are interested in including popular music in their senior theses and correlate projects an opportunity to dig into some of the fundamental texts that have set the debate. These texts derive from a number of different fields: music, sociology, cultural studies, and area studies. This 6-week course provides students with an opportunity to read through these difficult texts slowly and have the opportunity to discuss and get a deeper understanding of the scholarly debate, better preparing them to pursue their senior research projects.
The course starts with the conflicting theories of the Frankfurt and Birmingham schools and then moves into feminist critique, analysis of racialization in popular music, and criticism of global pop and world music. These areas deploy a wide variety of theories from around the social sciences and humanities. This intensive expands the conceptual tool kit available to students for analysis through primary source engagement, analysis, and application. Justin Patch.
Prerequisite(s): Declared major in a thesis required or thesis optional major; intention to write a thesis that includes analysis of popular music.
First six-week course.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: INT
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MUSI 252 - Book Club Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
In-depth exploration of a multi-disciplinary musical topic through student-selected readings and student-led group discussions. The course begins with a pre-selected book, with subsequent readings researched and selected by students. Each week students take turns leading the class through directed discussions of the readings, with summary presentations and prepared discussion points. After the initial pre-selected readings, the reading itinerary expands based on student interest. Each student (in consultation with the professor) selects readings for the entire class to read (books chapters or journal articles either referenced in our primary readings or researched independently), so that by the second half of the semester, the curriculum is entirely student-driven. The course culminates with presentations on subtopics of each student’s choosing. This course is open to students with backgrounds in music or other fields related to the topic, with the hopes of generating richly cross-pollinated discussions from multiple points of view.
Topic for 2020/21a: Music as Pathology, Music as Therapy. Music has always played a central role in human civilization, and because of its incredible power to influence human thought, emotion, and action, people (as far back as Plato and Pythagoras) have worried over the harmful effects of music. From 18th-century physicians who diagnosed (and institutionalized) patients with musical hysteria to the ”Satanic panic” of 1980s heavy metal, music has long been viewed as a potential medical and psychological danger. Thus, unsurprisingly, throughout the ages music has been weaponized in service of brainwashing, political manipulation, torture, and warfare. On the other side of the spectrum, people have harnessed the immense power of music as a tool for healing, as therapy for a number of physical, developmental, and psychological conditions. In this class we explore the long and complex histories of music as pathology and music as therapy, tracing the evolution of both of these threads from their historical origins through the present day.
Each week students take turns leading the class through directed discussions of the readings, with summary presentations and prepared discussion points. We begin with a few pre-selected readings (listed below), and then expand our reading itinerary based on student interest. Each student (in consultation with the professor) selects readings for the entire class to read–books chapters or journal articles either referenced in our primary readings or researched independently–so that by the second half of the semester, the curriculum is entirely student-driven. The course culminates with presentations on sub-topics of each student’s choosing.
This course is open to students with backgrounds in music, science, or history, with the hopes of generating richly cross-pollinated discussions from multiple points of view. Táhirih Motazedian.
Prerequisite(s): One course in music, science, history, or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: INT
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MUSI 255 - Follow the Lieder
0.5 unit(s)
In the early 19th century Beethoven and Schubert established Vienna as the seat of German song. Brahms, Wolf, and Strauss carried the form forward into the modern era. This six-week course examines the intimate marriage of German poetry and music during the romantic period when the Austrian empire went from being the largest power in Europe to a sentimental land on Europe’s eastern front. This course offers performance opportunities for singers and pianists as well as non-performance related projects. The course is open to all students, regardless of performance background. Miriam Charney.
Recommended: one course in Music or German.
First six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods plus extra periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 256 - Vassar Music Treasures
1 unit(s)
Vassar’s Skinner Hall of Music houses a valuable collection of historical instruments that represent the tastes and affinities of many generations of collectors, and offer important insights into social history, performance practices, and material culture. In this Intensive course, students work individually and in collaborative teams to combine research with hands-on examination and analysis of the instruments. The data generated will be used to build a new digital collection, Vassar Music Treasures, which will permanently reside in Vassar’s Digital Library as a resource for study and research. Kathryn Libin.
Prerequisite(s): One 100- or 200-level Music course.
Not offered 2020/21.
Course Format: INT
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MUSI 259 - Soundscapes: Anthropology of Music
1 unit(s)
(Same as ANTH 259 ) This course examines the epistemology of the ear through experimental and ethnographic learning. It interrogates the wide range of sounds that we are exposed to: ambient sound, conversation, storytelling, music, and advertising, as well as historical hearing. It also is how we learn and perceive differnently through hearing and how sound affects our sense of place and being, and the types of knowledge we prioritize in our everyday lives. This course requires the use of basic audio and video technology. Justin Patch.
Recommended: but not required that students have one unit of the following: Music, Anthropology, Sociology, or Media Studies.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2020/21.
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MUSI 282 - Extreme Listening: The Collaboration of Voice & Piano Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
This course explores the field of collaborative piano through the study of vocal repertoire, the art of coaching, and approaches to language and diction. Students study how to accompany art song, operatic arias, choral music, and musical theater through standard repertoire as well as underrepresented composers. Miriam Charney.
Prerequisite(s): Open to singers and pianists or with permission of the instructor.
Second six-week course.
One 2-hour period and individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 283 - Opera as a Whole Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
Why did Richard Wagner call opera the “complete work of art” (Gesamtkunstwerk)? In this 6-week intensive course, we will learn about opera from a detailed examination of six masterpieces of the genre, Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Puccini’s La Boheme. Is opera a musical form? A theatrical one? A literary one? Opera began in the 16th century as an exploration by a group of elite Italian poets of ancient Greek drama, but in the four centuries since then it has incorporated and explored the limits of the voice, dance, and applied arts within the form, and become more and more a response to the politics and society in which it was created. Through the lens of some of the greatest works in the repertoire, and the outputs of their composers, students consider why and how opera has moved from an elite literary form to a public art form. Drew Minter.
Prerequisite(s): One course in music (applied lessons, intensive, or classroom).
First six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 287 - Music in Classic French Cinema: 1930-1960 Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as FILM 287 ) The scholarly study of film music is a burgeoning topic. And yet a bias towards more recent film scores, taken together with Hollywood’s overwhelming influence, has tended to overshadow the accomplishments of European composers. This course examines a number of French films whose reputations rest in no small measure on their scores. We begin with an introduction to the terminology of film music studies, and then proceed to the works themselves, examining in detail the various uses to which music is put. Musical literacy is not required. Brian Mann.
Prerequisite(s): One course in either Music or Film Studies.
First six-week course.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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MUSI 288 - Machines and Musicians: A Technocultural History from Metronomes to Moby Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as STS 288 ) This course explores the often-unacknowledged connections between novel acoustic technologies and vital compositional practices. Through weekly lectures, assignments, and discussions, students consider the ways in which machines have helped to influence certain musical trends from the classical, Romantic, and contemporary eras.
Some featured clockwork and electronic technologies include Winkel’s Componium, Maelzel’s Panharmonicon, the Welte-Mignon player piano, Cahill’s Telharmonium, the Theremin, and the Moog synthesizer. This technocultural survey similarly presents a gamut of musical repertoires: from Haydn’s musical-clock suites to Antheil’s Ballet mécanique; Miles Davis’ synthesized jazz albums to Todd Machover’s recent robotic opera, Death and the Powers; and more.
In a final project devoted to modern-age sound production, students examine compositions and texts by Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Reich, and Roads. Grading is determined through class participation, a midterm test, a research and analysis project, as well as a listening quiz. Alexander Bonus.
Prerequisite(s): One unit in one of the following: Music, Science, Technology, and Society; Sociology; or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS
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