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An introduction to music theory course. Music theory fundamentals will be taught utilizing voice (singing) and an instrument in hand. Knowledge of the piano keyboard will be learned and utilized. Curriculum will span the harmonic series, circle of 5ths, scales and chords to ear training, harmonic and rhythmic dictation, and beginning composition. Score reading, listening, and analysis will include music of composers from diverse ethnic, racial, sexual, and cultural backgrounds. Course will include singing, aural, and listening components as well as written work.

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

This course will explore the construction and experience of gender and sexuality in the Middle East through a performative lens. Drawing on research in ethnomusicology, queer and gender studies, anthropology and Middle Eastern history, the course will examine performance (music, dance, theater, poetry and more) as a process of representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of sexuality and gender identities. This course will delve into the ways that performance, gender, and sexuality relate to ethnicity, nationalism, modernity, colonialism, and religion.

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.

Against a background of what is often described as a worldwide democratic recession or regression, this advanced seminar surveys current theoretical debates, empirical analyses, and policy conversations on the emergence, survival, challenges, breakdowns, and prospects of global democratization.

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Fall ‘25

Working in collaboration with the local Park-McCullough Historic Governor’s Mansion, students will create a new archive of the historic dress collection.

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. 

Today it is clear that the environment matters. In activism and scholarship and public policy, the environment has become a potent (if sometimes obligatory) point of reference. Less attention, however, has focused on the emergence of the environment itself as a converging field of action for advocacy, science, and statecraft. In this seminar, we will reflect not only on what we know of the environment but also on how we came to know the environment.

In this introductory-level Japanese course, students will explore Japan’s artistic treasures and diverse art forms to examine Japanese visual culture, history, and society while developing and practicing basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Japanese. This course offers a fun and dynamic way to begin your journey to study the Japanese language and culture.

“I, at least, am not a Marxist”&�Բ�����;Karl Marx

This course explores the life, works, and revolutionary contributions of Harry Partch (1901–1974), one of the most original and influential American composers of the 20th century. Partch was a pioneer of microtonal music and developed a unique 43-tone scale, which led him to construct his own instruments to realize his visionary compositions. Students will examine Partch’s unconventional approach to tuning, his rejection of equal temperament, and his philosophy of music as an integrated theatrical and corporeal experience.

Mystics––historically portrayed as passionate, dangerous, romantic, heretical, satanic––are a thorn in the side of organized religion. From the very beginnings of recorded human time, the presence and practice of mystics has been controversial. Sufi mystic al-Hallaj’s pronouncement that he was “the Truth” was received as blasphemy by the orthodoxy. His execution followed shortly after. Christian mystics of the 4th and 5th centuries were relegated to practicing outside the peripheries of the Roman Empire, in relative secrecy.

An intermediate review of theory based on a broad range of pop, classical, and jazz songs from the last centuries and from across the world. We’ll start with a primer on scales, intervals, and basic chordal moves such as the rhythm changes, then progress to chromaticism, modulation, and extended triadic harmonies.