Filmmaking and Moving Image Arts

Sarah Lawrence College’s undergraduate Filmmaking and Moving Image Arts (FMIA) offers a rigorous intellectual and creatively vibrant program where students are free to select classes without the confinement of majors. Through a wide range of classes, we offer students the opportunity to imagine themselves as a community of storytellers who are willing to take risks and break boundaries. With classes in screenwriting for film and television, and hands on production courses in narrative fiction, documentary/non-fiction, experimental, and animated film, students define and resolve artistic, historical, and analytical problems on their own, while also learning to work in collaboration.

Working with departments throughout the college students learn to consider film and the spatial arts within a variety of contexts. The program fosters open inquiry, community, and social engagement, and enables students to think critically about form and the choices that filmmakers and screenwriters must face. With all the richness of New York City at our fingertips, and a host of opportunities for students to study abroad and travel to L.A., Filmmaking & Moving Image Arts at Sarah Lawrence offers a unique, experience-based learning environment for students at all levels. Beyond graduation our students go on to win prestigious awards for their work, attend competitive graduate programs around the world, and become professionals in a range of film, animation and screenwriting careers.

Sarah Lawrence College offers state-of-the-art facilities for the FMIA program, including the Donnelly Film Theatre that seats 185 people and has a 4K digital cinema projector, an intimate 35-person screening room, several teaching/editing labs, a 1,400-square-foot soundstage, an animation studio, and a sound and Foley recording booth. Our equipment room offers Sony, Canon, Blackmagic, RED, and ARRI cameras, along with sound, grip, and lighting packages.

Filmmaking and Moving Image Arts 2023-2024 Courses

First-Year Studies: Documentary Filmmaking: The Personal is Political

FYS—Year | 10 credits

In this documentary course, students will locate themselves in larger movements for change in order to produce a three- to five-minute film. The projects may be grounded in portraiture, historically informed, and even the experimental and will exist through a lens of social change and personal experience. Students will work in teams to produce their films, building trust among each other as collaborators and practicing filmmaking as essentially interdependent creative work. Students will be required to make their work public and create social-engagement strategies for their final films. Given these unprecedented times—as we are presented with new opportunities to shift our understanding of self, community, and the roles that we can play in pursuing a just future—this course is for those who are committed to using filmmaking as a tool for change. This yearlong collaboration is equal parts media creation, screenings, and an understanding of the power of artists in movements for justice. For this course, there will be biweekly conferences, alternating with some kind of small-group activity at least for the first semester.

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First-Year Studies: Cinematography: An Introduction to Visualizing and Producing a Film

FYS—Year | 10 credits

Behind every artistic vision in filmmaking is an understanding of how to use technology to realize the story on a screen. A skillful cinematographer brings a new dimension to a director’s vision by creating images that enhance the narrative of the film. By studying select examples of visual styles, tones, and continuity from classic films, students will learn key elements to consider when using a camera and lights to further enhance the story. The images that appear on the screen arise from the artistic vision, imagination, and skill of the cinematographer working in a collaborative relationship with fellow artists. This class will provide students with the opportunity to explore this art form and learn how to capture visuals that will support the narrative of a story using available resources in a creative way. Students will work hands-on with film-production equipment and will explore the theoretical and aesthetic aspects of the craft. Course discussions will include framing, composition, color, and light to create compelling images. Students will learn fundamental “on-set” production skills, as they develop and shoot exercises on a weekly basis. In the first semester, students will work on recreating scenes from classic films; these exercises will focus primarily on visual style. The second semester will focus on original work that will incorporate the lessons learned during the first semester. We will cover operation of cameras, structure and job responsibilities of the production crew, principles of lenses, lighting, and scene composition. All students will work on weekly exercises focused on building skill sets that will prepare them for work beyond the course. This FYS will have weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter, at the discretion of the instructor.

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Animation

2D Character Animation

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

This course focuses on the fundamentals of animation through the development of 2D character design. The course will introduce students to traditional hand-drawn and digital techniques of frame-by-frame animation, where movement is created through successive, sequential character drawings. Students will learn the principles of animation through character design and visual development. Students will gain knowledge in drawing by engaging with formal spatial concepts in order to create fully-realized animated characters both visually and conceptually. Through the development of character boards, beat boards, and character animation, students will draw and animate human, animal, mechanical, and hybrid figures. Students will learn about body mechanics and motion flow in the development of animated characters through techniques that include walk cycles, rotating forms, transformations, holds, squash and stretch, weight, and resistance. Additional instruction will include techniques in pencil-test animation and lip syncing. Students will research characters in their visual, environmental, psychological, and social aspects to establish a full understanding of characterization. Examples of animations illustrating frame-by-frame character movement will be screened regularly. The course will conclude with a final project, for which students will develop, conceptualize, and produce a short animated character study. ToonBoom animation software Harmony will be the primary software incorporated in this course and will be provided to each student through the Animation Lab. Information and skills established in this class can be used to improve basic drawing and animation proficiency, establish fundamentals for digital animation production, create and enhance an animation portfolio, and develop tangible skills for producing graphic novels or a character outline for an interactive media project.

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Digital 3D Animation: Character and Environment Building

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

At a time when digital, three-dimensional space has saturated our visual vocabulary in everything from design and entertainment to gaming, now more than ever it is important to explore the interface of this space and find methods for unlocking its potential. This is an introductory course for Maya, the industry-standard 3D modeling and animation software. Over two semesters, we will learn the fundamental approaches to environment building, 3D modeling, character creation, character rigging, and keyframe animation. This course will also provide a comprehensive understanding of the important process of rendering, using texturing, lighting, and staging. We will explore how all of these processes may culminate in narrative-based animations, alongside how 3D constructions can be exported into everything from film projects to physical media. Great emphasis will be placed on experimentation in navigating between digital and physical processes. Exercises and assignments will be contextualized through lectures and with readings of both historical and contemporary creators in the field.

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Experiments in Hybrid Film/Animation

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

Animation is the magic of giving life to objects and materials through motion. Whether through linear storytelling or conceptual drive, a sense of wonder is achieved with materials, movement, and transformation. Combining digital processes with handmade techniques, this class helps students hone their visual skills to create short works that communicate through simplicity. The emphasis of the class is on process and concept, starting with a series of workshops intended to enhance student's skills in idea generation, concept development, and material animation techniques. The class includes instruction in a variety of undercamera, stop-motion processes, including: cutout paper animation, sequential drawing, sand, aftereffects motion graphics, simple object animation, puppet performance, and green-screen live performance for stop motion. All aspects of progressive movement are covered, especially the laying out of ideas through time and the establishment of convincing motion. The course includes instruction in basic design techniques, material manipulation, movement and timing, color, and idea development. A brief foundational study of the history of experimental animation is introduced through viewing the animated film work of artists from around the globe. During the semester, each student will complete five short, animated films ranging in length from 15 seconds to two minutes. Students are required to provide their own external media hard drive and to purchase some additional art materials. Software instruction includes AfterEffects, Adobe Premier, and Dragonframe. The aim of this course is to explore freely with materials in order to trailblaze fresh narrative and aesthetic possibilities in animation. Final projects may be executed as animated films, hybrid films, or animated/hybrid video projections for installation or the stage. Collaborations with students in music, dance, or theatre may be established at the incentive of individual class participants.

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Advanced Collective in Animation

Advanced, Small seminar—Year | 10 credits

Prerequisite: at least three Sarah Lawrence classes in animation or the equivalent and an ability to work independently with established knowledge of the software Harmony Premium or Dragonframe and AfterEffects

This advanced collective in animation is for students seeking to work on independent-study projects. The group will first meet weekly to establish guidelines and schedules for projects; then, the class will serve as a gathering place to report on project development. Conference meetings provide a framework for research and production, and the group meetings will assist with collaborative support for an advanced, short, animated film to be completed by the end of the year. Led by a team of filmmaking and moving-image arts faculty, students will be interviewed during registration to evaluate their proposed projects and assess their meeting prerequisites for the class. The week-to-week structure of the collective will be tailored to meet the needs of individual projects/groups as the semester progresses. Experienced animation students, both individuals and group projects, are invited to apply to the class. Interested students should interview and be prepared to present a project proposal.

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Lecture

Not for Children

Open, Small Lecture—Spring | 5 credits

This seminar course will take the form of a screening and small-lecture discussion, designed to provide an overview of auteur animation based on alternative writing and the relationship of form and style to content. We will examine various forms of animated films produced between 1960 and the present, with some time spent on the history and cultural crosscurrents that this work was produced within. The class will survey a wide range of work from a diverse selection of artists, including Oscar Fischinger, Lotte Reiniger, Renske Mijnheer, Stacey Steers, Karen Yasinsky, Adam Beckett, Christine Panushka, Chris Sullivan, William Kindridge, Lius Cook, and many others. The focus of the class is on animated film forms alternative to commercial animation; hand-drawn, cell-painted, cutout, stop-motion, pixilated, puppet, and more recently, CGI independents. In most cases, artists retaining control of their own work—unlike the battery of decision makers in commercial studio systems—will be the guiding factor in selecting work for review. As a class, we will look for aesthetic consequences and structural differences within the auteur system vs. an animation studio’s divisions of labor. All students are expected to fully participate in discussions during class and in conference meetings. Animation production will not be taught in this class; however, a creative conference project in studio arts, creative writing, film, animation, theatre, dance, or music—made at each student’s discretion and on their own—will be required. In addition, students will be expected to complete assigned readings outside of class, to attend biweekly group conferences, and to keep a weekly creative journal.

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Producing and Pitching: The Creative Producer in the Real World

Open, Lecture—Spring | 3 credits

Being a producer is a magical journey of discovery. Learning what stories are important to you, the best way to tell them, and why you must be the one to bring a story to life...these are the essential pillars of producing. A producer is the “visionary”—typically the one to initiate, develop, nurture, and shepherd a project, step-by-step, to its completion. The producer brings all of a project’s elements into existence and is the glue that holds them together. Taught through the lens of understanding what one or a small army of producers actually does, this course demystifies and explores the role of the producer on a feature or short film, documentary, television, animated, or digital project from the moment of creative inspiration through development, production, postproduction, and project delivery—defining what it means to “produce.” Led by an industry professional, this course takes a real-world look under the hood into the fundamentals of producing. In the first seven weeks, topics broadly covered include development; preproduction elements; collaborating with writers, directors, and crew; script breakdown; script coverage; scheduling, budgeting, financing, and distribution; and best producing practices. The second seven weeks will focus on pitching; the role of agents, managers, and executives; industry representation; and how to navigate a career from the classroom to the screening room. The course features industry guests from both behind and in front of the camera and is designed around reading, screening, and podcast assignments, as well as hands-on, in-class group work. Students will complete this course with a foundational knowledge of producing and pitching, gain a unique window into the importance of and mechanics pertaining to the producing discipline, and leave with an introductory toolkit for creating and seeking opportunities in the filmmaking and television worlds.

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Postproduction

Recording and Editing Sound for Film and Media

Open, Seminar—Fall | 2 credits

This course introduces techniques for recording and editing sound for film and media. Through a hands-on approach using recording equipment and Pro Tools, students will explore creating and mixing sound design and effects, Foley, and dialogue/ADR for film and other media. Studio work will be supplemented with readings on fundamentals of acoustics and media theory, as well as recommended films.

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Editing for Film and TV

Open, Seminar—Spring | 3 credits

In this seminar, we will focus on the tools of digital editing and how they can be used to achieve the filmmaker’s desired artistic results. Weekly assignments will range from editing a simple narrative scene with limited “coverage” to more complicated work editing scenes from feature films, television, and short films. Class discussion will navigate between the ever-changing technical landscape of postproduction to more aesthetic interests that emerge from various readings, including books such as Walter Murch’s In the Blink of an Eye, Bobbie O’Steen’s The Invisible Cut, and Christopher Bowen’s Grammar of the Edit. Technical instruction will focus on media management, import and organization, utilization of keywords and smart collections, basic editing, split editing, sound editing, color correction and color grading, export, and delivery. The class will balance time between step-by-step technical demonstrations and discussion of postproduction topics and techniques, screening, and critique of student work. This is not a “conference” course and has no conference work or individual conference meeting time outside of class. There will be opportunities during class time for individual attention during some class sessions. This course requires no previous editing experience. All footage will be provided.

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Preproduction

Storyboarding for Film and Animation

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

This course focuses on the art of storyboard construction as the preproduction stage and previsualization for graphics, film/video, and animation. Students will be introduced to storyboard strategies, exploring visual concepts such as shot types, continuity, pacing, transitions, and sequencing into visual communication. Both classical and experimental techniques for creating storyboards will be covered. Emphasis will be placed on production of storyboard drawings, both by hand and digitally, to negotiate sequential image development and establish shot-by-shot progression, staging, frame composition, editing, and continuity in film and other media. Instruction will concentrate primarily on drawing from thumbnail sketches through final presentation storyboards and animatics. The final project for this class will be the production by each student of a full presentation storyboard and a low-res animatic in a combined visual, audio, and text presentation format. Knowledge of storyboards and animatics from this class can be used for idea development and presentation of your project to collaborators, pitching projects, professional agencies, and, most importantly, for you—the maker. Storyboard Pro software will be used throughout this course.

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Producing for Film and Television

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

In film, while significant attention is inevitably paid to the director and his/her vision, the actualization of any project—whether documentary, fiction, or hybrid—rests in the ability of the producer to realize and even enhance a director’s vision all the way from development through to distribution. The job of the producer is to support a project’s creative direction and to make the project happen on schedule, on budget, within legal compliance, and toward the desired educational, distribution, impact or even commercial goals of the film. It is also to ensure a production environment informed and dictated by inclusive, safe, and ethical practices. In an ideal scenario, the director and producer work hand-in-hand, constantly weighing creative concerns against producing realities. Producing for Film and Television is a foundation course, designed to ground students in the fundamentals of the producing craft. The course will be organized around a semester-long project—the execution of a proposal (treatment, rough schedule, and budget) for a short film. In this way, students will experience firsthand the role of the producer through the development stage of a project—from the germ of an idea to its research, development, and final proposal presentation and pitch. While students will experience producing firsthand as it relates to their own project, instruction will extend the applicability of lessons learned to best filmmaking practices and include recent and current examples or conversations underway in the US film industry. Watching, screening, and analyzing films from a producing lens will be an ongoing aspect of the course. Although the “hard skills” of producing are the core of this class—budgeting, scheduling, and fundraising—the softer skills of producing in terms of team building, clear communications, and time management will be ongoing themes, as will issues of accountability, inclusion, safety, and representation. Ultimately, the producer is accountable to many people—the subjects of your film and the people with whom you work, including funders, executive producers, distributors, and others. An understanding of a whole panoply of skills are paramount to the role of producer, to your success in this class, and to your future as a filmmaker if that is your focus. Conferences will be held in small groups.

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Concept Art: Visual Development

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

This course will explore the preproduction aspects of animation concepts and visual development. Students will gain knowledge in character development, background environments, object and prop design, flora and fauna, scene building, color keys, aerial mapping, and techniques for digital painting. Through the development of compositional painting, model sheets, title cards, and animatics, students will draw and conceptualize spaces, characters, and props that are visually harmonious and consistent in form and function. Students will research and produce narrative outlines that include visual and environmental components to establish a full understanding of preproduction for animated projects. Students will “worldbuild” concepts by researching and designing a thematic approach to specific assignments and projects. Both hand-drawn materials and digital drawing will be used during the semester. Various software will be utilized for character design, background paintings, and concept presentation animatics. The final project for this course will include a fully-developed, multicharacter/environment concept animatic. Knowledge from this course can be used to create and enhance an animation or art portfolio, to establish a concept outline for an interactive media project, and to help in developing a cast of characters and environments for a graphic novel or an animated film. Lab Software: Storyboard Pro, Harmony, Photoshop, illustrator, Final Cut Pro X, After Effects, and/or Premiere, depending on experience and availability. Alternative Technology: iPad with Apple Pen. Microsoft Surface with stylus. Drawing software: Procreate, Fresco, ClipArt Studio, GIMP, Krita, etc. Additional choice of digital drawing software, with instructor’s approval.

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Production

From Ideas to Postproduction

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

This is a course in which you will conceive a short film from its very basis to the final completion. In the first half of the year, we will explore a creative and deep examination of the foundations and processes of writing with images and sounds. The course provides a path to a certain type of sensitivity that helps writers create not just the screenplay for the course but also all of their screenplays to follow. What are the fundamental skills you need for writing a film? What is the time of observation we need to do in order to be able to translate it into words? The script is a descriptive representation of the images and sounds that the writer has created in his or her imagination—beginning with the construction of an image that nests a story and exploring its possible forms and shapes, imagining characters from the inside outward, and then situating them in the image to let them grow. In the second part of the year, we will be exploring all of the areas of staging and styles in order to digest all of the information that we can make out of the script—from the very first impression of our story, through the actual image, until the editing. Working with each other on projects in a constructive and meaningful way and exploring an audiovisual style, the course will provide interaction and exposure to a wide range of types of film styles— from small to large productions. Some of our guiding questions will be: How do we understand the core of our image? How do we see scripts from a directing point of view? How is the image able to transmit emotions and thoughts? How can we develop critical and well-formulated thoughts of a film idea and expand our personal visual research?

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Short Film Composition

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

This is a film production course in which we will deepen and knowledge on how to find a voice in audiovisual language and be able to do a short film after exploring all of the areas of staging and styles. The course objective is to provide tools to critically digest all of the information we can make out of the script from the very first impression of our story, through the actual image, until the editing. We will work with each other on projects in a constructive and meaningful way and explore an audiovisual style. The course will provide interaction with and exposure to a broad range of types of film styles, from small to large productions. Students will also do exercises trying to find their voice and to develop possible types of mise-en-scène in regards to their audiovisual ideas and research. To better inform our discussions of the students’ materials, we will watch crucial fragments of films relevant to their research. Some of our guiding questions will be: How can we understand the core of our image? How do we see scripts from a directing point of view? How is the image able to transmit emotions and thoughts? How can we develop critical and well-formulated thoughts of a film idea and expand our personal visual research?

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Working With Light and Shadow

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

This course will present the basics of cinematography and film production; students will explore cinematography as an art of visual storytelling. The cinematographer plays a critical role in shaping the light and composition of an image and capturing that image for the screen. Students will investigate the theory and practice of this unique visual language and its power as a narrative element in cinema. In addition to covering camera operation, students will explore composition, visual style, and the overall operation of lighting and grip equipment. They will work together on scenes that are directed and produced in class and geared toward the training of set etiquette, production language, and workflow. Work will include the re-creation of classic film scenes, with an emphasis on visual style. Students will discuss their work and give feedback that will be incorporated into the next project. For conference, students will be required to produce a second scene re-creation, incorporating elements discussed throughout the term. Students will outline projects, draw floor plans, edit, and screen the final project for the class. This is an intensive, hands-on workshop that immerses the student in all aspects of film production. By the end of the course, they should feel confident to approach a film production project with enough experience to take on introductory positions with the potential for growth.

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Queer/Trans/Digital

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall | 3 credits

This interdisciplinary course examines queer/trans artistic and activist practices in the global digital culture. We will explore the ways in which queerness and transness are performed and constructed through digital media, as well as the impact of digital technologies on the formation of a new sense of being-with. Topics will include queer/trans representation and politics; the role of social media in activism and community formation; and the digital in relation to identity, power, and knowledge production. Through critical analysis and hands-on projects, students will gain a deeper understanding of queer and transgender issues with digital media and digital technologies.

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Filming With Actors: A Workshop for Directors and Actors

Intermediate, Large seminar—Fall | 2 credits

Prerequisite: FMIA students: completion of at least one film-production class

Learning how to communicate with actors is the number-one job of a budding director. It has often been said, however, that “directing is 85-90 percent casting.” A successful actor/director collaboration can create magic on the screen. How does one choose the right actor for a role? How does one get a great performance from an actor? What are the tools needed for the director to have an effective and successful collaboration with an actor? How do actors communicate effectively with directors? In this workshop/seminar, open to both FMIA and theatre students, we will explore the dynamics of the collaborative relationship between actors and directors, from casting to filming. For the directors (FMIA students), we will explore the various stages of the directing process: the role of the director, casting, script analysis, rehearsals, and communication with actors. Directors will be assigned one or two scenes to rehearse and film in class with actors, with feedback provided by the instructor. For the actors (theatre students), we will explore the basics of acting on film, with a focus on script analysis and the elements of characterization. We will also explore methods that will allow the actor’s work on camera to be loose, spontaneous, and real. Students will leave class with a strong set of tools that will assist them in their continued work as directors and actors.

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Queer Feminist Praxis: Community Engagement and Digital Humanities

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

This course explores various digital humanities projects and engages in innovative methods for community-oriented research through a queer feminist praxis. Through a combination of readings, discussions, and conference projects, students will gain an understanding of key concepts and theories related to race, gender, sexuality, disability, and technology. The course will provide students with practical skills for creating digital projects, as well as opportunities to work with communities. Conference work in this course will consist of a collaborative, community, digital-media project. That format will allow us to cultivate emerging moments of coming together that vitalize creative making, as well as to find innovative ways to share what was learned from a community-engaged research teaching experience and curatorial practice. This interdisciplinary and practice-based course invites students from all disciplines. Potential group conference projects: (1) leading film and media workshops for local communities, (2) creating an interactive storytelling project on Yonkers and Bronxville, and (3) curating an (online or on-site) exhibition. Prior experience in teaching and/or media production is welcome but not required.

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Filmmaking Basics: Where to Start

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

If you’ve always wanted to make a narrative film but don’t know where to start, this intensive, introductory workshop will give you the building blocks to make a short film. Starting with screenwriting, students will learn basic narrative structure and screenplay formatting so that they can write a three- to five-page script that they will produce and direct by the end of the term. Students will work both in groups and individually to explore the essentials of directing by completing several video exercises. Students will be introduced to camera operation, editing, sound recording, and basic production management to help them prepare for their conference project. All written and video projects will be presented in class and workshopped to help students improve their visual storytelling skills.

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Cinematography: Color, Composition, and Style

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

This course will explore the roles associated with film production, focusing on cinematography and lighting for the screen. In addition to covering camera operation and basic lighting techniques, students will explore composition, color palettes, and application of a visual style to enhance the story. The semester will revolve around weekly exercises, followed by creating and producing original work. Work will be discussed and notes incorporated into the next project. As part of conference work, students will be required to produce a short project in addition to the work completed during class times, incorporating elements discussed throughout the semester. Students will develop, write, shoot, edit, and screen a final project by the end of the term. This is an intensive, hands-on workshop that immerses the student in all aspects of film production. By the end of the course, students should feel confident enough to approach a film production project with the experience to take on introductory and assistant positions with the potential for growth.

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Screenwriting

Writing the Feature-Length Screenplay

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

To make a great film, you need three things—the script, the script, and the script. —Alfred Hitchcock

The world’s directors are in agreement—a solid screenplay is the foundation of any great film. This class is designed to help the beginning screenwriter find his or her voice as a film artist using the written language of visual storytelling. During the course of this seminar/workshop, students will learn how to write narrative screenplays with an eye toward completing a feature-length work. The course will cover basics of format and style, and weekly assignments will be aimed at developing students’ screenwriting muscles. In the first semester, students will write scenes and short screenplays; plus, they will learn about structuring feature-length work. Students will “pitch” ideas and rigorously outline their stories. During the second semester, students will write their feature-length screenplay. The pages that they present will be “table-read,” and students will receive critical feedback for future revisions. By the end of the year, students will have completed a first draft of their screenplay.

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Writing the Short Screenplay

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

From pitching ideas to developing outlines and building mood boards in order to develop cinematic storytelling skills, this course will take the student through the process of creating a short screenplay based on an original or adapted idea. Students will be introduced to screenwriting craft basics, such as format, three-act narrative structure, and how to create in-depth characterizations. An intimate workshop where all work will be shared and critiqued in a safe and constructive atmosphere, students will develop their work and end the semester with a completed short screenplay.

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Writing for TV: Writing the Spec

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

The fundamental skill of successful television writers is the ability to craft entertaining and compelling stories for characters, worlds, and situations that have been created by others. Though dozens of writers may work on a show over the course of its run, the “voice” of the show is unified and singular. The best way to learn to write for television—and an important first step for all TV writers—is to draft a sample episode of a pre-existing show, known as a “spec script.” Developing, pitching, writing, and rewriting stories hundreds of times extremely quickly, in collaboration, and on tight deadlines is what TV writers on staff do every day—fitting each episode seamlessly into the series as a whole in tone, concept, and execution. This workshop will introduce students to those fundamental skills by taking them, step-by-step, through the writing of their own spec (sample) script for an ongoing scripted half-hour television series—comedy, drama, or dramedy/traumedy/crimedy. This semester is the prerequisite to Advanced TV: Writing the Original, and will take students through the spec-script process—from premise lines, through the outline/beat sheet, to writing a draft of a teleplay for a currently airing show; no original pilots will be pursued in this class. In conference, students will work in depth through additional drafts of their script pages. In class, there will be heavy TV viewing in the first third of the semester, as students “learn” the shows that they will spec in this class. Prospective students are expected to have an extensive working knowledge across many genres of scripted TV shows that have aired domestically during the past several decades.

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Advanced Writing for the Screen

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

Prerequisite: one college-level screenwriting or TV-writing class (juniors and seniors)

This is a course for rigorous, experienced screenwriters who are proficient in screenplay format and style and want to build their writing portfolio. Students will come ready to pitch an idea for an original screenplay, TV pilot, or web series. This workshop-style class will feature table readings and feedback sessions, as well as readings and analysis of published work. Students will outline their projects, then quickly start producing pages for review.

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The Director Prepares

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

Our stories make us human, and the way that we tell our stories is as distinctive as our fingerprints. During the first few weeks of class, each student will write a short screenplay that will be used as the basis for learning the processes that a director uses to actualize his/her unique creative vision for a film. Development of the screenplay will continue in conferences. In class, lessons about the meaning of shots, concepts in staging and camera movement, creating look books, and directing filmed character exercises will immerse the student in the director’s preparatory process. Camera and editing workshops will provide a basic understanding of the tools of filmmaking. These tools will be applied to making storyboards and shot lists for directing a final, significant scene from the student’s screenplay. To further grasp the essential power of editing to the filmmaking process, each student’s footage will be given to another student to edit and show, following the director’s cut, in order to help us understand the power of “the cut,” as well as the seemingly infinite possibilities of the footage. Conference work will eventually shift to a focus on directing. Here, the professor will assign scenes from pre-existing screenplays for each student to direct, providing an opportunity for students to apply the skills developed in class to create a vision for someone else’s story—thus making it their own.

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Your Cinema Vocabulary

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

In a world filled with moving images, we are all highly capable spectators as well as screenwriters. In this course, we will deepen and complement our existing knowledge of the cinematic medium, challenge our assumptions, and experiment with new ways of conceiving and making cinema. This course explores a creative and deep examination of the foundations and processes of writing with images and sounds, unveiling the knowledge that the students already have and work from there. The course provides a path to a certain type of sensitivity that helps the writer create not just the screenplay for the course but also all of their screenplays to follow. Understanding the capacity of the medium is the most important objective. Introducing a variety of ways in which film can be made and seen—from contemporary to classical screenwriting sensitivities and from European to Latin American filmmaking—the idea is to expand our knowledge of the variety and range of films beyond the most mainstream productions. What are the fundamental skills you need for writing a film? What is the time of observation we need in order to be able to translate it into words? The script is a descriptive representation of the images and sounds that the writer has created in his/her imagination beginning with the construction of an image that nests a story and exploring its possible forms and shapes, imagining characters from the inside outward, and then situating them in the image to let them grow—in other words, to be able to pack entire worlds of thought, feeling, and imagination into the writing of scenes.

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Screenwriting: Tools of the Trade

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

The screenplay is the starting point for nearly every film, television, or web series. The majority of our favorite films and television shows begin with a writer and an idea. Aimed at the beginning screenwriter, this course will focus on the fundamentals of visual storytelling—story, structure, style, character development, dialogue, outlining, and formatting. Weekly writing prompts will be given, focusing on the highlighted fundamentals of the previous week. Assignments will then be read and discussed in class, using a structured feedback paradigm. In addition, students will be given weekly viewing and reading assignments as a way to strengthen their script-analysis skills. For conference, students will work on an independent, short screenplay that they will outline, write, and revise throughout the semester.

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Advanced Writing for TV: Writing the Original Script

Advanced, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

Prerequisite: Writing for TV: Writing the Spec and permission of the instructor

This class builds upon fundamentals learned in the spec-writing class, now with the focus on creating an original TV pilot—an important component of your portfolio for agents, managers, showrunners, and producers. Students will hone concepts, develop characters, and generate beat sheets and pages to create and write an original scripted half-hour show (no three-camera sitcoms). Focusing on engineering story machines, we power characters and situations with enough conflict to generate episodes over many years. In conference, students may wish to work on a pitch deck, pitch pages, and work in depth through additional drafts of their script pages. Students are expected to have an extensive working knowledge across many genres of scripted TV shows that have aired domestically during the past several decades.

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Anthropology and Images

Open, Seminar—Fall

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world.—Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual or acoustic in nature, made by hand or machine, circulated by word of mouth, or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization. Readings will include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images will be drawn from photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, films, videos, graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, phantasms, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine.

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First-Year Studies in Dance

FYS—Year

Students will enroll in a combination of component classes in dance, including an academic study in dance, improvisation, and a selection of movement practice classes at the appropriate level and with various instructors throughout the week. Together, these studies will make up the First-Year Studies in Dance. (Please refer to the component class descriptions.) The Improvisation course, taught by John Jasperse in the fall, is a required component for all FYS in Dance students. This course will include other students at the College and the entire FYS cohort; it is the heart of FYS in Dance. Here, we will explore making dance, starting with real-time composition in improvisation and progressing through the year to create short pieces of choreography in the spring. Students will be dancing in the studio every day. Throughout the fall semester, we’ll meet occasionally in sessions that bring us into exchanges with other creative arts-based FYS cohorts. Students will also meet in individual conferences with John Jasperse each week throughout the fall semester and in biweekly conferences in the spring semester to develop individual conference projects based on their particular interests and the materials explored in their classes.

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Guest Artist Lab

Component—Year

This course is an experimental laboratory that aims to expose students to a diverse set of current voices and approaches to contemporary dance making. Each guest artist will lead a module of three-to-seven class sessions. These mini-workshops will introduce students to that artist and his/her creative process. Guests will present both emergent and established voices and a wide range of approaches to contemporary artistic practice.

Choreographing Light for the Stage

Component—Year

This course will examine the fundamentals of design and how to both think compositionally and work collaboratively as an artist. The medium of light will be used to explore the relationship of art, technology, and movement. Discussion and experimentation will reveal how light defines and shapes an environment. Students will learn a vocabulary to speak about light and to express their artistic ideas. Through hands-on experience, students will practice installing, programming, and operating lighting fixtures and consoles. The artistic and technical skills that they build will then be demonstrated together by creating original lighting designs for the works developed in the Live Time-Based Art course.

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Yoga

Component—Spring

This yoga class is designed with the interests of dancers and theatre students in mind. Various categories of postures will be practiced, with attention to alignment, breath awareness, strength, and flexibility. The physical practice includes seated and standing poses, twists, forward bends and backbends, traditional yogic breathing practices, and short meditations. Emphasis is placed on mindfulness and presence. This approach allows the student to gain tools for reducing stress and addressing unsupportive habits to carry into other aspects of their lives. Attention will be given to the chakra system as a means and metaphor for postural, movement, and character choices. The instructor has a background in dance and object theatre, in addition to various somatically-based practices that she draws upon for designing the classes to meet the individual needs of the class members.

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First-Year Studies: Hollywood From the Margins

FYS—Year

In the last 10 years, a wave of online movements, sexual harassment cases, and studio worker strikes have exposed the systemic forces of exclusion and exploitation that shaped and still shape the US film industry. But how do we grapple critically with the ongoing material impact of Hollywood’s aura? What do we do with leftover myths and “beloved,” but horrifying, classics? Do we suppress them? Contextualize and critique them? Or disrupt their coherence and dismantle their authors by reappropriating them for art and other uses? This FYS seminar pairs 1930s-60s Hollywood films with novels, memoirs, essays, and experimental films about Hollywood to interrogate dominant narratives of film history and explore alternative modes to critique and reactivate classical Hollywood cinema. Course sessions will include a highly interdisciplinary introduction to the tools of film analysis, academic writing, and research, drawing on scholarship from across the humanities and a range of media—from films and texts to studio maps and fan magazines. During the first semester, we will reframe the history of the dream factory by deflating the romance of the male auteur and highlighting the role of marginalized labor on the studio lot. Starting with singular individuals with exceptional careers— like Dorothy Arzner, the studio system’s lone female director, and Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star—we will move on to culturally invisible studio workers: cutter girls, leader ladies, secretaries, extras, stunt doubles, custodians, and voice actors. During the second semester, our focus will shift from workers to spectator perspectives and experiences marginalized by the film industry, highlighting film criticism and experimental films by female, POC, and queer scholars and artists that propose subversive tools to change how we view and interpret classical Hollywood films. Topics to be discussed during the second semester include fan studies, gossip as film history, segregated storytelling, queer Hollywood “dream texts,” and “oppositional” Black looks. During the fall semester, students will meet biweekly with the instructor for individual conferences, alternating with small group conferences dedicated to writing, hands-on research, and fieldwork: We will learn how to use the library, analyze media ephemera, explore SLC’s 16mm film collection, and take field trips to local film archives and museums. In the spring, conferences will continue to take place biweekly without the alternating group conferences.

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Cultural History of Music Videos

Open, Lecture—Fall

This class explores how music videos, musical short films, and TikTok videos can be understood as a popular cultural object reflecting a multitude of political, social, and cultural trends from the 1930s through today. While many people think of music videos as being associated only with MTV, this class takes a more wholistic perspective by also considering musical short films—some examples include Len Lye (A Colour Box, 1935), Mary Ellen Bute (Synchromy No. 2, 1936), Normal McLaren (Five for Four, 1942), a multitude of Soundies starring African American performers from the 1940s, and Nam June Paik (Global Groove, 1973)—as a way to expand our understanding of the long historical impact that these shorts have had on global culture. Unlike the majority of music-video syllabi, this class prioritizes a cultural analysis approach to the medium, which allows students to utilize their textual analysis skills and apply them to pressing cultural issues. Some of the theory discussed in the class includes how to read closeups utilizing the work of theorist Béla Balázs; utilize the work of Richard Dyer to understand the role that disco music played in the gay rights movement in the 1970s; contextualize the postmodern aesthetic of MTV as a way to understand Ronald Reagan’s presidency; analyze the role that music/videos play in revolutionary politics—from the Carnation Revolution in Portugal to the fascist attack on Chilean democracy in 1973 to the role that music videos played in critiquing the politics of globalization in the 1990s; and the role that TikTok plays in the new Cold War between China and the United States. We also wrestle with issues of Black respectability politics within rap culture, as well as consider the Frankfurt School’s concept of the “cultural industry” within the framework of South Korean K-pop. Considering that there are far more music videos being made today—by both amateurs and professionals—than in MTV’s heyday, it becomes essential to consider how this media form reflects how musical images can be both a form of utopic escape from political conflict and a primary way in which our culture engages in political conflict.

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Producing for Film and Television

Open, Seminar—Fall

In film, while significant attention is inevitably paid to the director and his/her vision, the actualization of any project—whether documentary, fiction, or hybrid—rests in the ability of the producer to realize and even enhance a director’s vision all the way from development through to distribution. The job of the producer is to support a project’s creative direction and to make the project happen on schedule, on budget, within legal compliance, and toward the desired educational, distribution, impact or even commercial goals of the film. It is also to ensure a production environment informed and dictated by inclusive, safe, and ethical practices. In an ideal scenario, the director and producer work hand-in-hand, constantly weighing creative concerns against producing realities. Producing for Film and Television is a foundation course, designed to ground students in the fundamentals of the producing craft. The course will be organized around a semester-long project—the execution of a proposal (treatment, rough schedule, and budget) for a short film. In this way, students will experience firsthand the role of the producer through the development stage of a project—from the germ of an idea to its research, development, and final proposal presentation and pitch. While students will experience producing firsthand as it relates to their own project, instruction will extend the applicability of lessons learned to best filmmaking practices and include recent and current examples or conversations underway in the US film industry. Watching, screening, and analyzing films from a producing lens will be an ongoing aspect of the course. Although the “hard skills” of producing are the core of this class—budgeting, scheduling, and fundraising—the softer skills of producing in terms of team building, clear communications, and time management will be ongoing themes, as will issues of accountability, inclusion, safety, and representation. Ultimately, the producer is accountable to many people—the subjects of your film and the people with whom you work, including funders, executive producers, distributors, and others. An understanding of a whole panoply of skills are paramount to the role of producer, to your success in this class, and to your future as a filmmaker if that is your focus. Conferences will be held in small groups.

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Short Film Composition

Open, Seminar—Fall

This is a film production course in which we will deepen and knowledge on how to find a voice in audiovisual language and be able to do a short film after exploring all of the areas of staging and styles. The course objective is to provide tools to critically digest all of the information we can make out of the script from the very first impression of our story, through the actual image, until the editing. We will work with each other on projects in a constructive and meaningful way and explore an audiovisual style. The course will provide interaction with and exposure to a broad range of types of film styles, from small to large productions. Students will also do exercises trying to find their voice and to develop possible types of mise-en-scène in regards to their audiovisual ideas and research. To better inform our discussions of the students’ materials, we will watch crucial fragments of films relevant to their research. Some of our guiding questions will be: How can we understand the core of our image? How do we see scripts from a directing point of view? How is the image able to transmit emotions and thoughts? How can we develop critical and well-formulated thoughts of a film idea and expand our personal visual research?

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From Ideas to Postproduction

Open, Seminar—Year

This is a course in which you will conceive a short film from its very basis to the final completion. In the first half of the year, we will explore a creative and deep examination of the foundations and processes of writing with images and sounds. The course provides a path to a certain type of sensitivity that helps writers create not just the screenplay for the course but also all of their screenplays to follow. What are the fundamental skills you need for writing a film? What is the time of observation we need to do in order to be able to translate it into words? The script is a descriptive representation of the images and sounds that the writer has created in his or her imagination—beginning with the construction of an image that nests a story and exploring its possible forms and shapes, imagining characters from the inside outward, and then situating them in the image to let them grow. In the second part of the year, we will be exploring all of the areas of staging and styles in order to digest all of the information that we can make out of the script—from the very first impression of our story, through the actual image, until the editing. Working with each other on projects in a constructive and meaningful way and exploring an audiovisual style, the course will provide interaction and exposure to a wide range of types of film styles— from small to large productions. Some of our guiding questions will be: How do we understand the core of our image? How do we see scripts from a directing point of view? How is the image able to transmit emotions and thoughts? How can we develop critical and well-formulated thoughts of a film idea and expand our personal visual research?

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Queer/Trans/Digital

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall

This interdisciplinary course examines queer/trans artistic and activist practices in the global digital culture. We will explore the ways in which queerness and transness are performed and constructed through digital media, as well as the impact of digital technologies on the formation of a new sense of being-with. Topics will include queer/trans representation and politics; the role of social media in activism and community formation; and the digital in relation to identity, power, and knowledge production. Through critical analysis and hands-on projects, students will gain a deeper understanding of queer and transgender issues with digital media and digital technologies.

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Philosophy Through Film

Open, Lecture—Fall

You care about movies (I presume). Why do you care about movies? Because they entertain you? Because they are beautiful? Because they are informative? Because they make you feel things? The guiding thought of this class is that we care about movies, because they participate in the practice of philosophy (or at least they have that potential). Of course, this also presumes that we care about philosophy (a claim that will take some time to defend). To test that hypothesis—that films have the potential to participate in the practice of philosophy—we first need to consider what the practice of philosophy is. Then, we will need to say something about what film is. And then, we can examine whether film can do philosophy. In the first part of the course, we will analyze the medium of film in order to clarify the characteristics of film that would allow it to be philosophical. In the second part of the class, we will explore how those characteristics of film contribute to how we think philosophically about our lives. In particular, we will explore problems pertaining to subjectivity (What it is to be a human being?) and to ethics (How do I know the right thing to do?). Each week we will watch a film (including Jeanne Dielman, Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Get Out, and Spring Breakers) and read a philosophical text (including Aristotle, Cavell, Merleau-Ponty, Parfit, and Adorno) with the aim of placing the two in conversation.

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SLCeeds: Passion Project Launch Pad

Open, Large seminar—Spring

In this course, you are going to take an idea for a passion project and take the first step in bringing it to life. You will design, execute, and publish a minimum viable project that validates your area of interest, develops your reputation in your interest area, and gives you valuable experience from which to continue moving forward. This type of project will help you to: clearly and concisely communicate your ideas, reflections, and insights; practice pitching your work to new audiences and potential partners and collaborators; build influence in a field or space that is new to you; develop your professional network in a meaningful and intentional way; engage with and activate rockstar mentors on a tangible projec; learn more about yourself, including your values, passions, and purpose; and gain valuable perspective and experience on what it takes to bring ideas to life. You are an ideal fit for this course if you have one or more of the following: an idea for a passion project that you want to bring to life; a business idea that you would like to explore and test; a particular problem that you would like to solve for a specific group of people; an initiative that you want to launch; a personal brand that you want to launch into the world; a specific job for which you want to competitively position yourself.

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First-Year Studies: The Senses: Art and Science

FYS—Year

The perceiving mind is an incarnated mind. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1964

Sensory perception is a vital component of the creation and experience of artistic works of all types. In psychology and neuroscience, the investigation of sensory systems has been foundational for our developing understanding of brains, minds, and bodies. Recent work in brain science has moved us beyond the Aristotelian notion of five discrete senses to a view of the senses as more various and interconnected—with each other and with the fundamental psychological processes of perception, attention, emotion, memory, imagination, and judgment. What we call “taste” is a multisensory construction of “flavor” that relies heavily on smell, vision, and touch (mouth feel); “vision” refers to a set of semi-independent streams that specialize in the processing of color, object identity, or spatial layout and movement; “touch” encompasses a complex system of responses to different types of contact with the largest sensory organ—the skin; and “hearing” includes aspects of perception that are thought to be quintessentially human—music and language. Many other sensations are not covered by the standard five: the sense of balance, of body position (proprioception), feelings of pain arising from within the body, and feelings of heat or cold. Perceptual psychologists have suggested that the total count is closer to 17 than five. We will investigate all of these senses, their interactions with each other and their intimate relationships with human emotion, memory, and imagination. Some of the questions that we will address are: Why are smells such potent memory triggers? What can visual art tell us about how the brain works, and vice versa? Why is a caregiver’s touch so vital for psychological development? Why do foods that taste sublime to some people evoke feelings of disgust in others? Do humans have a poor sense of smell? Why does the word “feeling” refer to both bodily sensations and emotions? What makes a song “catchy” or “sticky”? Can humans learn to echolocate like bats? What is the role of body perception in mindfulness meditation? This is a good course for artists who like to think about science and for scientists with a feeling for art. This is a collaborative course, with small-group meetings held weekly in addition to the individual conference meetings held every other week. The main small-group collaborative activity is a sensory lab in which students will have the opportunity to explore their own sensory perceptions in a systematic way, investigating how they relate to language, memory, and emotion. Other group activities include mindful movement and other meditation practices for stress relief and emotional regulation, as well as occasional museum visits if these can be done safely.

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Psychology of Children’s Television

Open, Lecture—Fall

This course analyzes children’s media, specifically preschool media through middle school, using cognitive and developmental psychology theory and methods. We will examine specific educational television programs with regard to cognitive and social developmental issues related to family life, peer relationships, and education issues. Because media has an enormous impact on children’s behavior, this has increasingly become a subject of interest among researchers and the public. This course addresses that interest by applying cognitive and developmental psychological research and theories for the development and production of educational media. In addition, the course helps identify essential elements that determine the positive and negative qualities of media for children. Finally, the course examines and evaluates how psychological theories and frameworks can guide the successful production of children’s media (e.g., social cognitive theory). Projects and assignments will include weekly class discussions on peer-reviewed journal articles, watching television programs, group preschool television pitchbook preparation, child observations interacting with screens, and media artifact critiques as assigned.

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Art and Visual Perception

Open, Small Lecture—Spring

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. —John Berger

Psychologists and neuroscientists have long been interested in measuring and explaining the phenomena of visual perception. In this course, we will study how the visual brain encodes basic aspects of perception—such as color, form, depth, motion, shape, and space—and how they are organized into coherent percepts, or gestalts. Our main goal will be to explore how the study of visual neuroscience and art can inform each other. One of our guides in these explorations will be the groundbreaking gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, who was a pioneer in the psychology of art. The more recent and equally innovative text by the neuroscientist Eric Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, will provide our entry into the subject of neuroaesthetics. Throughout our visual journey, we will seek connections between perceptual phenomena and what is known about brain processing of visual information. This is a course for people who enjoy reflecting on why we see things as we do. It should hold particular interest for students of the visual arts who are curious about scientific explanations of the phenomena that they explore in their art, as well as students of the brain who want to study an application of visual neuroscience. The course format is a small lecture (30 people), with one lecture and one small seminar (10 people) every week.

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Technology and Human Development

Open, Lecture—Spring

All of us today grow up in a technology-rich environment, which is not only different from the one we grew up in but also is still changing and evolving rapidly. The course examines the use and design of an array of educational technologies (computer programs, multimedia software, television, video games, websites, and so on) from the perspective of basic research and theory in the human cognitive system, development psychology, and social development areas. The course aims to provide a framework for reasoning about the most developmentally appropriate uses of technologies for children and young adults at different ages. Some of the significant questions we will focus on include: How are their developmental experiences affected by these technologies? What are the advantages and disadvantages for children using technology, especially for learning? In this class, we will try to touch upon these issues by reading classic literature, researching articles, playing games, watching programs, using apps, and discussing our experiences. Projects and assignments will include weekly class discussions on peer-reviewed journal articles and media artifact critiques written by individual students and through group project work.

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Perspectives on the Creative Process

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

The creative process is paradoxical. It involves freedom and spontaneity yet requires expertise and hard work. The creative process is self-expressive yet tends to unfold most easily when the creator forgets about self. The creative process brings joy yet is fraught with fear, frustration, and even terror.The creative process is its own reward yet depends on social support and encouragement. In this class, we look at how various thinkers conceptualize the creative process—chiefly in the arts but in other domains, as well. We see how various psychological theorists describe the process, its source, its motivation, its roots in a particular domain or skill, its cultural context, and its developmental history in the life of the individual. Among the thinkers that we will consider are Freud, Jung, Arnheim, Franklin, and Gardner. Different theorists emphasize different aspects of the process. In particular, we see how some thinkers emphasize persistent work and expert knowledge as essential features, while others emphasize the need for the psychic freedom to “let it happen” and speculate on what emerges when the creative person “lets go.” Still others identify cultural context or biological factors as critical. To concretize theoretical approaches, we look at how various ideas can contribute to understanding specific creative people and their work. In particular, we will consider works written by or about Picasso, Woolf, Welty, Darwin, and some contemporary artists and writers. Though creativity is most frequently explored in individuals, we also consider group improvisation in music and theatre. Some past conference projects have involved interviewing people engaged in creative work. Others consisted of library studies centering on the life and work of a particular creative person. And some students chose to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center and focus on an aspect of creative activity in young children.

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Social Movements and Powerful Art: Aesthetics of Authority and Resistance

Open, Seminar—Spring

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

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Social Movements and Powerful Art: Aesthetics of Authority and Resistance

Open, Seminar—Spring

Using US-based artist Sarah Sze’s remark, “Great protests are great art works,” as its inspiration, this seminar explores the relationship between art, collective ideas, and social change within the context of social movements. We begin by discussing the relationship between aesthetics and the social sciences, focusing on a sociological notion of art as a collective and inherently social process. Our study includes the work of social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, and Theodor Adorno, whose works not only illuminate how public culture communicates collective ideas but also how the latter is imbricated with existing power structures and social hierarchies. These critical frameworks will help us investigate the modern art world, exploring how artistic institutions and movements are sites that both perpetuate and resist authoritative ideologies. In the second half of the semester, students will use these frameworks to explore the role of culture and art within collective social movements. We will investigate several questions, including: What defines a social movement and what social conditions produce social movements? How are art and aesthetics used within social movements to communicate ideas and strengthen communities? In what ways do movements deploy art as a form of social resistance or authority? Our discussions will particularly attend to grassroots movements within historically marginalized communities. Throughout the semester, students will also learn about the benefits of visual methodologies and how social scholars use them to understand collective culture and social change. For conference, students will select a specific social movement, exploring how art is deployed within the movement for collective resistance or control. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) critical analysis of an artistic institution, comparative analysis of how different contexts of resistance deploy shared artistic mediums, or the use of art within a given movement over time. While class discussions will primarily focus on the United States, students are also invited to explore the relationship between art and social movements in other social locations.

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First-Year Studies: The Art of Comic Performance

FYS—Year

Life is a tragedy when seen close up, a comedy when a long shot. To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it. —Charlie Chaplin

What makes something funny? What does it take to make an audience laugh? An exploration of the evolution of modern comedy, we will uncover the roots of comedy in our culture through improvisation and the analysis of early texts. We will study the political comedies of Aristophanes, the characters of commedia dell’arte, the language of high British comedy, and the sources of African American humor in vaudeville. How are these historical constructs realized in modern-day comedies? “Laughter connects you to people. It’s impossible to maintain a kind of distance when you are howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy,” accordng to John Cleese. The students will use the forms of the past to create their own material. The work will include exercises to discover your clown, the comical partnering of vaudeville, timing exercises for heightened language, and character creations of the commedia dell’arte. As we investigate these classic comic structures, our goal will be to discover our own unique comic perspective as writers, actors, and theatre artists. Conferences will be weekly for the first six weeks and then biweekly thereafter. As Wanda Sykes says, “What drives the creative person is that we see it all.”

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The Face Is a Clock: Drawing Portraits

Open, Seminar—Fall

Portraiture has a rich and complex history. Drawing a face is an ideally challenging way for students to learn how to render realistically, through line, light, shadow, volume, and space. Intentionally manipulating this same graphic language can embed portraits with the complex emotional and psychological states that lie beyond visual representation. Politically, socially, and historically, portraits have been a means to establish class and gender, provide immortality, and document the human condition. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of drawing through the subject of the portrait. The act of looking will be primary for us, as seeing the face accurately—as it truly exists—is a constant challenge for artists. As the semester progresses, we’ll move from observational portraits into interpreted, experimental drawings that challenge traditions and norms of portraiture. As you learn to draw what you see, you’ll simultaneously begin to reveal qualities not visible—those psychological, political, symbolic, and personal aspects of portraits that make them individual and unique. Students will work on daily drawing exercises both inside and outside of the studio in order to build a disciplined drawing practice. For context, we will look at a range of historical and contemporary examples of portraiture and will visit New York City exhibitions to see art works. A visiting artist working in portraiture will visit class, as well.

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1,001 Drawings

Open, Seminar—Spring

This will be a highly rigorous drawing class that pushes young artists to develop a disciplined, sustainable, and experimental drawing practice with which to explore new ways of thinking, seeing, and making art. Each week, you will make 50 to 100 small works on paper based on varied, open-ended, unpredictable prompts. These prompts are meant to destabilize your practice and encourage you to interrogate the relationship between a work’s subject and its material process. You will learn to work quickly and flexibly, continually experimenting with mediums and processes as you probe the many possible solutions to problems posed by each prompt. As you create these daily drawings, you will simultaneously work on one large, ambitious, labor-intensive drawing that you revisit over the entire semester. That piece will evolve slowly, change incrementally, and reflect the passage of time in vastly different ways from your daily works. This dynamic exchange will allow you to develop different rhythms in your creative practice, bridging the space between an idea’s generation and its final aesthetic on paper. This course will challenge you to ambitiously redefine drawing and, in doing so, will dramatically transform your art-making practice.

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Senior Studio

Advanced, Seminar—Year

This course is intended for seniors interested in pursuing their own art-making practice more deeply and for a prolonged period of time. Students will maintain their own studio spaces and will be expected to work independently and creatively and to challenge themselves and their peers to explore new ways of thinking and making. The course will incorporate prompts that encourage students to make art across disciplines and will culminate in a solo gallery exhibition during the spring semester, accompanied by a printed book that documents the exhibition. We will have regular critiques with visiting artists and our faculty, discuss readings and myriad artists, take trips to galleries and artist’s studios, and participate in the Visual Arts Lecture Series. Your art-making practice will be supplemented with other aspects of presenting your work—writing an artist statement, writing exhibition proposals, interviewing artists, and documenting your art—along with a series of professional-practices workshops. This is an immersive studio course meant for disciplined art students interested in making work in an interdisciplinary environment. 

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Visual Arts Fundamentals: Materials and Play

Open, Seminar—Fall

This class is open to all students of any experience level, including those currently enrolled in a creative arts FYS, and serves as an introduction to fundamental areas of the visual arts, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, collage, and related mixed-media processes. We’ll discuss these mediums through image presentations, videos, and a gallery/museum visit. Students will then make art in each of those areas via open-ended prompts, experimenting with new materials, processes, techniques, and ideas. Materials will be provided, and you’ll be encouraged to discover through play. Emphasis will focus on developing your creative imagination and building visual literacy. This class culminates in an end-of-semester exhibition.

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Painting Pop

Open, Concept—Fall

In this experimental studio class, we will explore how to digest, appropriate, reconfigure, and rewrite popular media using mostly, but not limited to, painting, drawing, and collage and open to video, animation, sculpture, and performance. We will examine how artists operate as consumers, catalysts, motors, and destroyers of TV, film, music, social media, and advertisement. Slideshows, readings, and presentations will exemplify the tight relationship between art and popular media throughout history and contemporary art and will serve as inspiration for students to create their own works. Students will be encouraged to deconstruct their own spectacles of adoration and critique and celebrate images that are impactful to them. We will promote generative group conversations, studio time, experimentation, collaboration, creativity, and improvisation.

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Performance Art

Open, Seminar—Spring

Since the early 20th century, artists have explored performance art as a radical means of expression. In both form and function, performance pushes the boundaries of contemporary art. Artists use the medium for institutional critique, social activism, and to address the personal politics of gender, sexuality, and race. This course approaches performance art as a porous, transdisciplinary medium open to students from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, filmmaking, theatre, dance, music, creative writing, and digital art. Students learn about the legacy of performance art from the 1970s to the present and explore some of the concepts and aesthetic strategies used to create works of performance. Through texts, artists’ writings, video screenings, and slide lectures, students are introduced to a range of performance-based artists and art movements.

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Creative Reuse

Open, Seminar—Fall

By adopting creative reuse strategies in art-making practices, we can transform everyday objects, remnants, and trash into treasures. When researching a common object’s history, its use, circulation, and disposal, we see the devastating consequences of extractive practices and overconsumption on our planetary health. How can we, instead, use our junk and leftover scraps to hold memory, tell stories, and evoke regenerative possibilities? While salvaging and repurposing materials, students explore innovative ways to infuse personal meaning, cultural significance, and ecological urgency in their artwork. The course is structured around assignments, hands-on experimentation, research, and field trips. Students will develop a conference project that gives discards a second life.

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What Remains: Presenting Absence

Open, Concept—Spring

How do we notice the traces of what’s no longer here? How do surfaces and forms bear the lingering presence of human use? This course will consider the artistic and philosophical concept of absence in its many forms: vanishing, dematerialization, disappearance, nothingness, forgetting, loss, and grief. Through lectures, readings, and studio exercises, we will experiment with multiple artistic and conceptual frameworks for bearing witness to acts of removal, erasure, and temporality. The class will explore how these strategies can, in fact, bring more visibility to suppressed bodies, histories, and ecologies. Some of the artists whose works we will consider include Gordon Matta-Clark, Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, David Hammonds, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Walid Raad, Do Hoh Suh, Danh Võ, Janine Antoni, and Stephanie Syujuco, among others.

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Activating Art in Public Places

Open, Seminar—Spring

The course will guide students in navigating the complexity of working in the public realm. The class explores methodologies and precedents for how artists translate their concepts, research, materials, processes, and scale into proposals for public works that respond to the needs of place and community. How can your work be in direct dialogue with its surroundings—physically, historically, and metaphorically—to activate the site? How can art mobilize the public into civic engagement, social change, and ecological repair? Through intentionality, projects engage audiences in participation, collaboration, or even disruption. Students will propose and develop a conference project with regular feedback, critique, and support from faculty and peers.

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Episodes

Open, Seminar—Fall

The use of the episode is both ancient and modern and is central to storytelling in everything from The Arabian Nights to telenovelas, from The Canterbury Tales to Netflix, from comics to true-crime podcasts. Episodes differ from chapters in a novel and from short stories and can have many changing characters and plot lines. Episodes are disinclined toward resolution but love time, hunks of it, and do well depicting both the daily, including work, and the historical. We will be reading, looking at, discussing, and writing episodes in several forms and, for conference work, writing or rewriting six or so related episodes supported by small brainstorming conference groups as we go forward.

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Nonfiction Laboratory

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course is for students who want to break free from the conventions of the traditional essay and memoir and discover a broader range of narrative and stylistic possibilities available to nonfiction writers. During the first half of the semester, students will read and discuss examples of formally innovative nonfiction by writers such as Claudia Rankine, Nathalie Sarraute and George W. S. Trow. These readings will serve as the inspiration for brief assignments that will be read aloud and discussed each week. During the second half of the semester, students will workshop longer pieces that they will have written in consultation with the instructor as a part of their conference work. Required texts: The Next American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, and Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra. All other readings are in the PDF packet.

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Creative Nonfiction

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Fall

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.

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