In his plays and lyric poetry, Shakespeare writes of the natural world as something that shapes both thought and action in fundamental ways. In As You Like It, A Winter’s Tale, and other plays, natural places test and reform, enlarge and renew both society and the individual. We will discuss, among other topics, Shakespeare’s use of the image of nature to construct his characters' psychological dilemmas in tragedies like Hamlet and King Lear; to analyze problems of kingship and the commonwealth in Macbeth and Richard II; to explore the conflict between desire and obligation in Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream; and to meditate on the experience of life and love in the timebound world in Cymbeline and the sonnets. In addition to the plays and poems mentioned above, we will also, on occasion, examine short selections from other early modern writers such as Spenser and Donne. Applicable English Clusters: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater; Great Books, Great Authors.
This course in the classical and scriptural backgrounds to modern English and American literature demonstrates how great books such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' two Oedipus plays, Euripides' Trojan Women and The Bacchae, Plato's Symposium and other dialogues, Aristotle's Poetics, Virgil's Aeneid, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and Dante's Inferno define the core of Western Civilization. All of the works we read will be familiar, whether you have read them before or not. That is, they and we are part of the same tradition. They have been rewritten again and again by every generation of writers since classical times. Applicable English Cluster: Medieval Studies.
This course introduces students to some of the most significant literature from the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern literary periods. Beginning with the outbreak of the French Revolution and ending with World War I, the years covered by this course represent a time of dramatic political, economic, and cultural change. The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of industrialism, rapid imperialist expansion, religious crisis, increasing democracy, and shifts in gender and class identity. In exploring this tumultuous time period, the course will focus on an array of novelists, poets, and essayists who will serve as touchstones for the key political, intellectual, and aesthetic problems of their times (e.g. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Dickens, G. Eliot, Browning, J.S. Mill, Arnold, Ruskin, Yeats, and Woolf). During the course, we will address the political, aesthetic, and intellectual issues that are traditionally viewed as characterizing Romantic, Victorian, or Modernist literature. Students will not only gain a greater appreciation for individual authors, but they will also be able to situate them within a larger framework of ideas and historical currents.
This course will examine developments in American literature and, in particular, the American novel, from the mid nineteenth-century to the late twentieth-century. Our specific focus will be the question of how changing social contexts-- including the technologies, ideologies, and philosophical perspectives that impact a particular historical moment-- affect the ways in which Americans understand the nature of identity. We begin with two mid nineteenth-century texts, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills (1861) in order to examine the shift from romanticism to realism, as the self is put into crisis by the potentially objectifying power of daguerreotype technology and the demands of industrialized labor. Framing our discussion with a brief analysis of William James's writings on pragmatism, we will next consider the strategies and implications of realism in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and Henry James's Daisy Miller (1878). The second half of the course will consider the relationship between the objects of consumer culture and American identity, first, in a reading of Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie (1901), and later, in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1971), a disturbing novel about the far-reaching and destructive effects of a particularly insidious version of the American dream. We will end the term with Don DeLillo's postmodern vision of American life, White Noise (1984). Significant to all of our discussions throughout the term will be the consideration of how identities are constructed within the matrices of race, gender, and class through the peculiar interplay of visual perception and desire.
This course provides a broad overview and introduction to media. We will cover histories of different types of media (internet, telegraph, radio, audio recordings, television, film, journalism, magazines, etc.) as well as various theories and approaches to studying media. No prior knowledge is necessary, but a real interest and willingness to explore a variety of media will come in handy. Occasional outside screenings will be required (but if you cannot attend the scheduled screenings, you may watch the videos on your own time through CLABS or the Multimedia Center reserves). Students will be evaluated based on assigned writing, class room discussion leading, participation, short quizzes, midterm exam and final exam. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
A creative writing course dedicated to literary/commercial writing that will focus on fantasy of all types, including science fiction, alternate history, magic realism, and any other fiction with a "fabulist" bent to it. My preference is to give you samples of the best of these various commercial genres but introduce you, as well, to a new genre loosely defined as "strange fiction"-- a growing industry among publishers that merges the literary and the fabulistic. So while we will be reading stories by Nancy Kress, Kathe Koja, and , we will also be looking at Jorge Luis Borges, Stephen Millhauser, and other authors of Very Strange Fiction who cut across genre labels. Please: those interested in writing stories about Flesh-Eating Robots or Violent Gods and Dynasties of the Future abstain. Badly needed: humorists. By permission of instructor - see Professor Higley, with some writing to show her before registration begins in November.
This class provides an introduction to the writing of poetry and fiction. Students will experiment with different poetic and literary forms, and will engage in writing exercises to develop and refine their use of images, characters and descriptive language. We will begin by studying the basic components of poetry and the short story. The course will conclude with a workshop in which every student will present material to be reviewed by the entire class.
This course will concentrate on the craft of fiction through readins of published stories and exercises involving tone and voice, culminating in the writing of at least one short story.
This is an introductory course for students who have already begun to write some poetry on their own. Every week students' poems will be discussed in a workshop format. Selected works by contemporary poets (such as Plath, Walcott, Ginsberg, Ashbery, Rich, Heaney, and others) will provide an essential background for examining various approaches and techniques. Specific or "open" assignments will be given weekly. Permission of instructor required. Please submit 3-5 poems to the instructor, preferably before the first class, since space is limited. Applicable English Clusters: Poems, Poetry, and Poetics; Creative Writing.
A course devoted to the understanding and execution of dramatic writing that is unique to the theatre. Students will analyze and discuss selected readings while writing an original one-act play to be completed by the end of the semester. Meets during one half of the semester only. Contact the Theatre Program at 275-4959 for details. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
More than twenty years ago the poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." In this course we shall examine women's lives through the act of non-fiction writing. Focusing on prose writing (rather than poetry), each student will actively practice the creative act of telling the truth about her own and other women's lives. We shall also read many diverse examples of women's autobiographical writing and other non-fiction genres, by such acclaimed practitioners as Virginia Woolf, bell hooks, Alice Walker, Annie Dillard, Dorothy Allison, and Maxine Hong Kingston. Weekly exercises will focus on creative writing and critical reading, as well as critiquing each other's works. Each student will also complete one longer project, worked on throughout the semester. No previous experience is required, just a willingness to write often, revise constantly, and read other women's work with an open mind. The weekly class meeting will be supplemented by periodic individual meeting times with each student. Applicable English Cluster: Creative Writing.
The study and practice of longer, more complicated newspaper and magazine stories, such as investigations and profiles. Emphasis will be on the consideration of the various techniques of non-fiction writing. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
Editing Practicum concentrates on the newspaper editing process, including specific copy preparation skills and overall management. Among topics included during the term are copy editing; layout and design; news decision- making; organization and management; directing coverage; First Amendment issues; libel and ethics; editorials and opinion; photo selection and graphics. Students meet weekly to discuss reading and interview assignments; critique current issues of "Campus Times;" participate in writing and editing projects; periodically hear presentations on specific topics by guest editors and executives of Gannett Rochester Newspapers; and develop detailed reports on key topics in editing. Open, by permission of the instructor, to students who have completed ENG 113 and ENG 114, or who are "Campus Times" editors or senior staff members. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
Basic public speaking is the focus of this course. Emphasis is placed on researching speeches, using appropriate language and delivery, and listening critically to oral presentations. English 134 contains two quizzes, a final exam, and four speeches to be given by the student. The speeches include a tribute, persuasive, explanatory, and problem solving address. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
The purpose of this course is to give students an appreciation for and knowledge of critical thinking and reasoned decision-making through argumentation. Students will research both sides of a topic, write argument briefs, and participate in formal and informal debates. Students will also be exposed to the major paradigms used in judging debates. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
This course introduces the basic aesthetic and tchnical elements of video production with an emphasis on experimental (non-narrative) aesthetics. This course will include technical workshops, screenings, readings, and presentations. Students will learn video priduction and nonlinear editing, techniques in lighting and sound recording, as well as more experimental film and video produiction processes. Enrollment is limited to 15 students. Supply fee $50.
An introduction to Technical Theatre and Theatre Technology: its materials, techniques and equipment. Focuses on the principles and practice of set construction; the nature and use of electricity; lighting and sound equipment; tools; production organization and management; and the importance of safety in all areas. Course will include both lecture and significant hands-on experience. Practical laboratory work in association with the productions of the International Theatre Program is included.
Acting Techniques II focuses on developing the student's ability to analyze texts from a performer's viewpoint, on heightening the actor's sensitivity to language, on developing the actor's physical and vocal technique, on building a deeper awareness of character and characterization in the student actor, and on engaging and actively developing creativity and imagination. This is done by the constant investigation, rehearsal, and presentation of assorted texts ranging from poetry to contemporary and classical scenes and monologues. Attendance at all classes is mandatory. Note: Acting Techniques I is NOT a requirement for this class.
This is a new 4 credit, full semester course, aimed at helping student performers explore the full range and expressiveness of their speaking voice, explore the relationship between text and vocal expression, expand their movement ranges, while learning a descriptive system for understanding movement and meaning, and analyze their own movement profiles as actors, creating characters through clear movement choices, and embodying these characters fully.
This is the course to start with if you have never taken a dance class before. It explores movement through technique and improvisation. It emphasizes spontaneity, joy in moving and self-awareness and is based on the fundamental movement patterns of skipping, walking, running, leaping, etc. With its focus on centering and coordination, it provides a strong foundation for further study in dance, theater, or sports. No previous dance training required.
Contact improvisation is rooted in dance, the martial arts and studies of body development and awareness. It is a duet form where partners use weight, momentum, and inertia to move each other freely through space, finding support through skeletal structure rather than muscular effort. We will explore solo and duet skills such as rolling, falling, balance, counter-balance, jumping, weight sharing, spirals, and attuning to sensory input. Skill work will be combined with more open dancing in a supportive and focused environment. No previous dance training required.
Of all literary genres, romance comes closest to the core of human experience and expectation. Originating in the social and political matrices of its culture, a romance commonly engages its audience by moving beyond familiar definitions of good behavior to explore uncertainties and contradictions within the society's ethical values. This course focuses on popular English literature of the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, when England was moving from a manorial society with its feudal Christian values toward more urban, mercantile structures where discrepancies between theory and practice loom large. We will be dealing primarily with a rapidly developing vernacular literature that draws on folklore, local mythology, and a vague sense of English selfhood as the protagonists find themselves trapped in difficult situations that drive them into unfamiliar terrain (wildernesses, monstrosity, treachery, weird animals, and deviant behavior), where cunning enemies would supplant their integrity, forcing the heroes (male and female) to redefine their rightful domain as they struggle to reclaim their former societies on new terms. The stories are lively, inventive, highly entertaining, usually quite short, and utterly amazing in their range of traumatic circumstances.
Chaucer's reputation as "Father of English Literature," though deserved, sometimes obscures the fact that he is perhaps the funniest (lol) writer in our language. He is also among the most intellectually curious, most book-learned, and most experimental of authors. Writing at a moment when there was virtually no "serious" poetic tradition in English (hence the paternity claim), Chaucer more or less invented vernacular writing (and style) as a category. He did this in part by placing the writer "Geffrey" - a version of himself - at the heart of many of his fictions, and this entirely likeable but totally elusive sense of Chaucerian personality contributes greatly to the pleasure and challenge of reading. Chaucer's language (Middle English) is old, and initially requires conscious effort for understanding; it is also one of the most distinctive and direct versions of English that we have, melodious, abrupt, and plangent by turns, memorable in itself and in the ways it forces us to pay attention to the language we now speak. We will read Troilus and Criseyde (one of the two or three greatest poems in English), a selection from The Canterbury Tales, and a selection of shorter narrative poems. Students will have a chance to read and recite medieval English, and will write two short papers or reports (2-3 pages each), and a longer final paper; there will be a final exam. Fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English Clusters: Medieval Studies; Great Books, Great Authors.
"'Speke, sweete bryd, I noot nat where thou art!' This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart...' From "The Miller's Tale," Chaucer. Here are two men speaking to each other literally through their asses, one of them thinking that he's speaking to a woman, the other one thinking that he's got the "upper hand." This course examines discursive relationships in medieval European literature with an emphasis on the carnal. But what is the carnal? Is it always the lower bodily order, or can it have a spiritual dimension? How does the body "speak," what does it speak about, what was its problematic status then, how did Christ transfigure it, and what do the various fabliaux, romances, allegories, homilies, theological treatises, passion plays and medical texts tell us about medieval society and this fragile flesh? We will read three tales by Chaucer (Miller's, Wife's Prologue and Tale, Pardoner's), but also Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lanval, Sir Degarre, Sir Gowther, selections from Langland, several Old French fabliaux, some selections from medieval women writers including Hildegard of Bingen, and some pretty heady middle Welsh poetry. The Secrets of Women, written by two ignorant clerks, is a real hoot. Fulfills the pre-1800 requirement and the cluster in Medieval Literature.
This course will study the full range of Shakespeare's plays, including his comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. We will pay attention to both dramatic language and historical context in order to read and analyze the plays with as much comprehension and pleasure as possible. The reading list will include A Midsummer Nights Dream, Twelfth Night, Richard III, Henry IV parts one and two, Hamlet, Othello, Anthony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, The Tempest, and perhaps the Sonnets. Course requirements: two exams made up of identifications and two papers. Applicable English Clusters: Great Books, Great Authors; Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
In the eighteenth century the Novel was a new genre, its conventions far from stabilized. These fictions experimented with modes of portraying consciousness and the external world, and tested out various narrative techniques; they thus beg the question of what a novel is. How does it go about its task of representation similarly to, or differently from, other genres? What is the experience it should create for the reader? (Do we read novels to learn about our world or to escape from it? Can novels improve us? Can they be dangerous?) Reading novels by Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen as well as some of the contemporary reactions to them we will consider who, and what, made, and makes, the novel the novel. May be counted towared the pre-1800 requirement for the English major. Applicable English Cluster: Novels.
"Romanticism" is associated with the thrills and chills of literature in extremis. In an era of tremendous cultural and political change--and corresponding violence and stress--British Romantic writers of astounding talent conducted radical literary experiments. They explored the extremes of imagination hoping to find new and better ways of expressing the ultimate pleasure and pain, the deepest fear and grief, the greatest perversion and depravation. In many cases this determination to break out of old restrictions and pursue human experience to its outer limits brought them to the dangerous edge where dreams meet reality in "visions" and hallucinations, sometimes with tragic consequences. In other cases they experimented with new ways of representing the ordinary features of ordinary lives in hopes of achieving unprecedented literary depth and intensity. We shall sample authors, modes, and genres across the breadth and scope of British Romantic writing, such as William Blake's apocalyptic fusion of texts and designs "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", Wordsworth's groundbreaking autobiographical poem The Prelude, Coleridge's aborted opium dream "Kubla Khan," Mary Shelley's philosophical gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft's radical feminist manifesto A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and Byron's outrageous comic-erotic satire Don Juan. Our strategy will be governed by four concepts that are fundamental to the art of reading: sound, sight, metaphor, narrative. As we sample Romantic writing, we'll work simultaneously to develop reading skills in these four areas.
Many areas of knowledge that we now typically associate with the social and natural sciences emerged and gained momentum during the nineteenth century. In this course we will examine the ways in which nineteenth-century British novelists, in particular, were influenced by and responded to the arguments of various "sciences" that were emerging during their time period such as political economy, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. The aim of this course is to situate canonical Victorian novelists like George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope within contemporary intellectual conversations and the gradual emergence of new fields of knowledge. How did Victorian novelists integrate these new forms of knowledge into their narratives as they addressed such questions as human motives, social interdependence, shifting forms of property and finance, race, kinship, marriage, and sexuality? While the primary focus will be Victorian novels, the course will supplement readings of novels with selections from canonical figures in political economy, anthropology, and sociology such as Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and E.B. Tylor. In addition to providing necessary intellectual background, the course will use these supplementary readings to examine how different forms of writing (e.g. the novel, economic and anthropological texts) shape the way similar questions and problems are addressed, often leading to rather varied conclusions.
This course will examine the major issues and texts of the literary romanticism movement in the United States prior to the Civil War. The course materials will be divided up into three complimentary sections: I. History, II. Art and Nature, and III. Individual and Society. Tracing American romanticism to its philosophical sources, we will examine the ways in which the romantics grappled with the problem of American identity, often at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics. What are the possibilities and limitations of the American self? How -within the cultural matrices of class, gender, and race- does it understand its relationship to others? Major authors will include: Irving, Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Stowe, Jacobs, Whitman, Harding Davis, and Thoreau.
Although race-based chattel slavery in America officially ended well over a century ago, our nation continues to grapple with the legacies of "the peculiar institution." Slavery has haunted, in particular, the literary imaginations of African-American writers of the last century. This course surveys a range of African-American novels, from the end of the 19th century to our present era, in order to analyze the ways in which these texts both portray and represent slavery's lasting effects on American culture, society, and politics. Readings: Steven Barnes, Lion's Blood; Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder; Octavia Butler, Kindred; Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces; Charles Johnson, Middle Passage; Edward P. Jones, The Known World; Gayl Jones, Corregidora; Toni Morrison, Beloved, Song of Solomon; Margaret Walker, Jubilee. Students will be evaluated on class participation, an in-class presentation, weekly reading responses, and two formal papers. Applicable English Cluster: American and African American Studies; may be applied to the cluster on Modern and Contemporary Literature on an exceptional basis.
When the now-classic novels of writers like Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and D.H. Lawrence were published in the first part of the 20th century, readers were shocked by both their style and content. In the face of revolutionary upheavals in social and political life and in the understanding of human psychology and personal relationships (including the devastating effects of WWI), modernist writers proclaimed the end of fiction as we know it, calling into question the very notion of "reality". Looking back at this fiction from our vantage point at the beginning of the 21st century, we will reconsider what made these works both "modern" and shocking". We will pay particular attention to the challenges they posed to received understandings of gender, sexuality, history, and personal identity, and to the ways they explored the limits and possibilities of language and representation. Pairing earlier twentieth-century novels with novels from the second half of the century, we will also look at the way later writers revised the idea of modern consciousness and the fiction appropriate to it and at the ways they responded to the post WWII remapping of the British Empire and to the construction of postmodern and postcolonial identities. Applicable English Clusters: Novels; Modern and Contemporary Literature.
See AH 306.
We will read and discuss a rich sampling of the works of Ernest Hemingway, including the short stories, several novels, and some journalism and memoirs. We will also examine the author's life, his relationship to modernism, and his impact on American and world literature. Applicable English clusters: American and African American Studies; Great Books, Great Authors; Novels.
Blending clear-eyed social commentary with a faith in romantic love, festooning mordant satire with enchantedly happy endings, Jane Austen's novels subsist on contradiction and enjoy more popularity than ever. This course will place Austen in the context of her times while also analyzing her continued appeal. Readings include Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, as well as novels by such authors as Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Anne Radcliffe, and the Brontes.
See IT 196Q.
The last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21st have seen a virtual explosion of writing by women, with novels by women constituting some of the most widely read and critically admired work being produced today. Among the distinctive features of this literary resurgence is the global reach of both its authors and audiences, making contemporary women’s writing a truly international phenomenon. This course will explore the implications of this internationalization of women’s writing, asking what novels from a range of national and cultural locations (and a range of languages of origin) have to say to each other. It will also ask how well our reading practices and cultural assumptions (including well-established feminist premises) equip us for reading works produced in other cultures, especially non-Western ones. The course will be loosely organized around the theme of translation: translation understood in its broadest sense as a move between languages, cultures, and conventions. We will look at both novels written in English and novels in translation, and we will consider what it means for particular authors to write, or not write, in English. We will also consider how these novels stage the problem of what can and cannot be translated: in terms of language and in terms of experience. As one form of translation, we will explore the way contemporary women writers have adapted or translated the novel for their own ends, experimenting with new voices and narrative forms that often blur the traditional borders of the genre. At the same time, we will also look at the way much contemporary writing by women has deliberately turned to the past for its inspiration and self-consciously appropriated, or rewritten, earlier texts and historical moments. This course fulfills the Studies in International Literature requirement for the Certificate in Literary Translation Studies. Applicable English cluster: Gender and Writing. May also be applied on an exceptional basis to the clusters in Modern and Contemporary Literature, and the Novel.
This course considers the founding of Hollywood by the sons of East European Jewish immigrants in the early part of this century. Readings include some histories of Hollywood, such as Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own. Some attention is to how film-making grew from earlier popular art forms and, under the influence of the several major Jewish studio heads, took on forms and values of Yiddish theater melodrama, which blended with indigenous American values and styles. The course will try to relate generic features of Hollywood films and related popular literature--such as the happy ending, the relation of women to men, the treatment of love and violence, the use of spectacle, the western, gangster, family, and glamor motifs--to Jewish and American values, their differences and their combinations. If there is interest, film music can also be part of the course. No exams; written commentary on films and readings for collective study.
See Theatre in England for more information.
The course would examine these two genres of film that both purport to have a direct effect upon the spectator's body - provoking laughter, screams, or, often, a combination of both. It would explore each genre's history and defining characteristics, while also emphasizing moments of intersect6ion between the two, as in the increasingly campy slasher films of the 80s and 90s, or horror film parodies.
The course examines diasporic Chinese cinemas from the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC), Hong Kong (HK), the U.S. and Canada. We will pay special attention to the migrations of individuals (actors, actresses, directors, cinematographers, and others) and to texts (the films and in some cases television programs). We will cover a wide variety of genres, including epic, martial arts, action, thriller, comedy, and drama. Some experience with film studies, especially world cinema, and Chinese history will be helpful but not required. Outside screenings of films are required. Applicable English cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication. Not open to students who took Eng 267, Topics in Media Studies: Chinese Cinemas, in fall 2004.
We will study the career of a highly regarded contemporary American director whose work, most of it of the more or less violent genres of horror, crime, and suspense, displays both a highly self conscious experimentalism and an acknowledgment of film tradition. In the course we will attempt to discover those particular attributes that define a De Palma film. We will also discuss those directors who most influence his work, especially Alfred Hitchcock, and touch on some of the individual motion pictures that lie behind certain of De Palma's films. In the course we will screen a large selection of the director's films, in roughly chronological order, concentrating especially on the best known and most successful titles, including Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and Body Double. The syllabus will include some of the literary texts that provide the sources for some of his films and at least one critical study of the De Palma canon. Assignments will include critical papers and a final examination.
See AH 211.
Major museums around the world are now collecting motion pictures and other types of moving image and audio-visual art with a level of commitment equal to their traditional interests in paintings, sculptures and other established art forms. These creative works exist in unique formats that bring special challenges to curators and archivists responsible for their conservation and proper exhibition. Taking full advantage of the George Eastman House's rich archival film collection and screening facilities, this course offers instruction in curatorial and preservation standards for motion picture, video, digital and audio materials with a contextual focus on museum, library and archive institutions. Class instruction emphasizes basic concepts of preservation, research, programming, cataloging, digital technologies and preservation; management and interpretation of collections; museum and institutional collections development policies; museum architecture relating to audio-visual media; fund raising and education. Students will be assisted in selecting a topical area of interest in film and media studies, relating to their broader academic pursuits, from which they will develop a special research project. 35mm archival film and other media screenings presented on class night in the Dryden Theatre at 8:00pm are considered part of the class. Enrollment is limited to 20 students.
This course investigates technical theater beyond the realms of Eng 170/171 (Technical Theatre). It focuses on work related to the scenic design and technicial production of the two Fall Theatre Program productions. Working in small seminars and one-on-one tutorials,the instructor will assist students in learning more in the chosen technical areas and about problem solving scenic and technical questions raisted by the set/s being built. Course work will consist of supervisory responsibilities, one major and several smaller research projects.
This course will concentrate on working through and workshopping two one act or a single full-length play, through class readings and critiques, as well as in a staged reading in front of an invited audience.
"Presidential Rhetoric", taught by former Presidential speechwriter Curt Smith, helps students critically examine the public rhetoric and themes of the modern American presidency. Particular attention will be given to the symbolic nature of the office, focusing on the ability of 20th-century presidents to communicate via a variety of forums, including the press conference, inaugural and acceptance speeches, political speech, and prime-time television address. Mr. Smith will draw on many of his experiences in Washington and with ESPN/ABC Television to link the most powerful office in the world and today's dominant medium. Applicable English Cluster: Media, Culture, and Communication.
Each student in Plays in Production participates fully in the exciting behind-the-scenes world of theatrical production. Students build sets, create and make props and costumes, hang and rig lighting and sound equipment, and create and distribute publicity materials for the plays currently in production in Todd Theatre. The class comprises a once-weekly lecture and a series of practical labs. This 4.0-credit course meets for the entire semester. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
"Plays in Performance" is a class made up of actors and stage managers working on the current production in Todd Theatre. Actors are cast after auditioning at the beginning of each semester. Students wishing to stage manage should approach the director of the production either at the time of auditions or before the beginning of the play's rehearsal process. Although there is no written component for this course (the performance of the play constitutes a final "exam"), a significant time commitment is required of actors and stage managers, both on weekday nights and over weekends. This class meets during the second half of the semester. Applicable English Cluster: Plays, Playwrights, and Theater.
