91527

CMSC 117 Introduction to Computing:Interactive Systems

Keith O'Hara

Lab:

M . . . .

. . W . .

. . . . F

1:30 -2:50 pm

1:30 -3:30 pm

RKC 103

RKC 100

MATC

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities This course introduces students to computing through the construction of interactive computing systems, exploring the interface between the physical and virtual worlds. Students will explore creative computation through programming projects involving 2D and 3D graphics, animation, interactivity, and the visualization of data. No prior knowledge of computer programming is required. Prerequisite: passing score on part 1 of the Mathematics Diagnostics. Class size: 25

91296

LIT 140 Introduction to Media

Maria Sachiko Cecire

. T . Th .

11:50 -1:10 pm

OLIN 201

HUM

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities; Science, Technology, & Society This course offers a foundation in media history and theory, with a focus on how to use aspects of traditional humanistic approaches such as close reading and visual literacy to critically engage with both traditional and new media. The work of theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Jean Baudrillard, Katherine Hayles, Henry Jenkins, Friedrich Kittler, and Marshall McLuhan will guide our discussions as we consider how media frame and shape humanistic texts, from medieval manuscripts to the transmediated narratives of the internet age. Topics to be covered include print culture, the rise of the motion picture and electronic media, algorithms and hypermedia, and what Jenkins has called the convergence culture of today. As part of our ongoing examinations of how material conditions shape discourse, we will assess our own positions as users, consumers, and potential producers of media. Class size: 18

91541

FILM 248 Framing the Election

Jacqueline Goss

. . W . .

10:10 -1:10 pm

AVERY 217

PART

Cross-listed: American Studies; Experimental Humanities; Science, Technology & Society If a canon of film, video and new media exists, it includes provocative media made in response to presidential elections. Fiction and documentary works like Haskell Wexlers Medium Cool, TVTVs Four More Years, Robert Altmans Tanner 88 and Nashville, Jason Simons Spin, DA Pennebakers War Room, and RTMarks voteauction and gwbush.com websites successfully capture the complex narratives and legacies of the last four decades election years. Designed to coincide with the months immediately prior and following the US presidential election in November, Framing the Election provides a structure for the course participant to capture, process, frame and produce some aspect of presidential politics in terms of ones own personal experience. Following the chronology of the election, we will use the first two months of the semester to gather source material and consider texts produced out of prior elections. The latter part of the semester is dedicated to the production of films, videos, sound works or internet-based projects made in response to the results of this election. Works may reflect any political persuasion and take any form including documentary, diary, personal essay, fiction and music. Prerequisite: a familiarity with and access to the tools one intends to use to produce work. Class size: 12

91281

LIT 2236 Reading Resistance and Revolution in the Arab World

Dina Ramadan

M . W . .

1:30 -2:50 pm

OLIN 201

FLLC

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities; Human Rights, Middle Eastern Studies With the recent uprisings in the Arab world, much attention has been given to the role of writers and artists in political movements. Beginning with anti-colonial resistance movements of the early 20^th century, this course will survey the changing understanding and expectations of the literary and cultural production in the region. Iltizam or literary commitment, a translation of Jean Paul Sartres notion of engagement, became a central concept during the decades of postcolonial nation-building when there was a profound confidence in literature and art as tools for representing and transforming socio-political realities. By the 1970s however, there was an increasing mistrust of the traditional narrative structure central to the social realism of previous generations. This political disillusionment was reflected in a range of stylistic and aesthetic shifts in the decades that follow. We will begin by reading some of the foundational committed texts, such as Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawis The Earth, before moving on to more contested and experimental works such as Ghassan Kanafanis All That is Left to You, and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's In Search of Walid Masoud. We will also focus on the role of poetry, particularly colloquial poetry, in chronicling popular resistance. Finally, we will consider literary and artistic works produced the last few years, thinking about the ways in which they reflect a shift in understandings of writers, artists, resistance, and revolution. All readings will be in English. This course counts as a World Literature offering. Class size: 22

91673

THTR 247 A Democracy in America:

Populist Performance in Theory and Practice

Annie Dorsen

M . . . .

1:30 - 4:30 pm

FISHER PAC

PART

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities This course uses the creation of a crowd-sourced performance as a vehicle for exploring crucial trends in contemporary performance: art-making as social research; the relation between political activism and artistic production; charges of populism or elitism; and the role of social media in art practice. We will explore theories and moments of democratic art. We will look at a wide range of sources to try to understand the potential and problems of crowd-sourced art, politics, labor, economy. Finally, we will make a crowd-sourced performance of our own using the Bard community as our population, by developing this material into collage performance. Class size: 15

91761

THTR 247 B Chance in Performance

Annie Dorsen

. T . . .

11:30 - 2:30 pm

FISHER PAC

PART

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities The notion of chance has been used to describe a wide range of artistic practices, including the readymade, collage, participatory work, indeterminacy in composition and/or performance, and more. This course will cover the major historical, theoretical and practical issues surrounding its use in artistic production, and survey its significance in performance. We will explore distinct and overlapping movements in which chance has figured, beginning with Dada and Duchamp, and including Cage/Cunningham, Fluxus artists, Nature Theatre of Oklahoma and Eve Sussman. Students will create projects using, or responding to, the techniques studied. Class size: 15

91357

WRIT 225 Writing Fiction for New Media

Paul LaFarge

. . . Th .

3:10 -5:30 pm

OLIN 309

PART

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities This class will explore some of the formal possibilities which digital media open to the writer of fiction. Well work with several technologies, among them hypertext, interactive fiction (IF), platforms for location-specific writing, animation and multimedia. No technical proficiency is assumed, but the class will involve working with applications and learning some basic coding skills. Well consider digital-media works by Michael Joyce, Shelley Jackson, Geoffrey Ryman, Neal Stephenson and others, and well read paper-bound works by Borges, Nabokov, Cortzar, Roubaud and others which inform and anticipate the space of digital literature. Class size: 12