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This course will focus on the performance of Latin American music from all over the Americas, including South, Central, and North America, the Caribbean, and beyond. The ensemble will combine hands-on learning of diverse vocal and instrumental repertoire, traditional instruments (particularly percussion), and performance practices. Students will receive a thorough background in the cultural context of the music through in-class activities, listening assignments, and in the experience of learning the music.

In this intermediate course, students will learn about various art forms in Japan from pottery in the Jomon Era (about 14,000 BC – 300BC) to Takashi Murakami’s so-called “superflat,” a postmodern art movement, in the Heisei Era (1989 -2019).  As they learn about Japanese art, they will analyze elements of Japanese aesthetics that were shared in various art forms during each period.  Students will also examine what societal changes influenced the changes in art.  There are numerous points in the long Japanese history where the styles of Japanese art changed d

We will study and perform from the string band traditions of rural America. Nova Scotia, Quebecois, Irish, New England, Scandinavian, African-American dance and ballad traditions. In addition, these will be experienced with listening, practice (weekly group rehearsals outside of class), and performing components. Emphasis on ensemble intuition, playing by ear, and lifetime personal music making skills (transposition, harmonizing, etc.).

In this course, we will be uncovering, re-positioning, and affirming historical legacies and traditions that stand the risk of being lost forever, and explore how to use them to fight discrimination, racism and hate today.

This Reading & Writing Fiction course focuses on the novel, and in particular on reading and writing the body, with an emphasis on femininity. We will look at both the construction of and conspicuous erasure of the femme/feminine body. We will treat gender as a construct, discussing gender normativity, ciswomanhood, transness, and other related subjects and subjectivities.

In this low-intermediate course, students will learn and examine Japan’s drastic social changes during the Edo period and the Meiji period to investigate what equality and equity meant to Japanese people.  During the Edo Period (1603-1868), Japan closed its doors to other countries for about two hundred fifty years, and this isolation helped Japan develop its own unique culture. It, however, ended in 1867 when Japanese culture was introduced to the Western world at an International Exposition in Paris.

Rakugo is one of the traditional Japanese art and storytelling entertainment that became extremely popular during the Edo period (1603-1868).  Rakugo is a rather unique storytelling performance because a storyteller sits on a seat on the stage called “��Ǵdz���” and tells humorous stories without standing up from the seat.  Moreover, the storytellers narrate and play various characters by changing their voice, pitch, tone, facial expressions, and physical movements.