Disability and Difference

Professor:

Jack Ferver, Dumaine Williams, Jaime Alves, Erin Braselmann, and Corey Sullivan

Course Number:

CC 107

CRN Number:

10691

Class cap:

60

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Campus MPR (First month of the semester)

 Tue  Thurs    8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 101

 Tue  Thurs    8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 203

 Tue  Thurs    8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 204

 Tue  Thurs    8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 205

Distributional Area:

LA Literary Analysis in English MBV Meaning, Being, Value  D+J Difference and Justice

Disability and Difference is a Common Course that utilizes close readings of canonical and contemporary texts; critical and creative writing assignments; films; movement explorations; and  guest lectures to deepen students’ understanding of disability and difference. Students will work with the cohort of professors in different contexts throughout the course, as well as collaboratively with their classmates on analytic and creative projects. Professor Alves will offer a set of literary-critical tools for analyzing how texts featuring disability represent the experience of living with a nonconforming body and/or mind. Students will explore various literary forms---including short fiction, poetry, and the essay---and consider how such texts operate in the creation of disability as a category of identity. Professor Braselmann will help students engage with first-person narratives describing the lived experience of disability. Students will examine the importance of personal narrative to create societal change and challenge ableism. Professor Ferver will open the semester with body/mind centered physical practices. Through somatic experiencing, students will learn to connect to their own body and strengthen their subjective kinetic relationship. Prof. Sullivan will explore representations of identity and difference through a survey of self-portraiture in media history. Through this multidisciplinary study of the creative process, students will consider how each artist’s practice navigates and impacts perceptions of disability, while also reflecting on our own understandings and presentations of self. Professor Williams will examine how intersectional disability experiences and systems of disadvantage and exclusion impact the formation of disability identity and influence our cultural understanding of disability.

Rules and Regulations

Professor:

Betsy Clifton, Alex Kitnick, Julia Weist, and Nabanjan Maitra

Course Number:

CC 125

CRN Number:

10451

Class cap:

60

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Reem Kayden Center 103

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value PA Practicing Arts  

Crosslists: Studio Art

Rules and regulations shape our lives, structuring everything from architecture to religion to sexuality to behavior on Bard’s campus. Even realms of thought typically imagined to be free from constraint, such as art and spirituality, are governed by sets of implicit and explicit guidelines. While we might associate rules and regulations with authority, and subscribe to them out of a sense of duty, or in fear of reprisal, they also create operating manuals that allow things to function (everything from games to societies). While we may capitulate to norms out of anxiety, shame, or fear–or defy them because they conflict with a deeply ingrained sense of self–they also create feelings of commonality and forms of communication. Sometimes, too, we must break–or bend–rules for the sake of novelty or out of a sense of injustice. In this course, we will seek to better understand these forces, and consider the differences between them. We will survey rules and regulations that have been implemented in the past and discuss which ones we would like to see in the future–that is, if we want to see any at all. We will also consider adjacent terms such as laws and norms. Our investigations will take a variety of forms: we will analyze theoretical texts, pursue case studies, and embark on creative projects that explore everything from the rules of the US postal system to the aesthetics of the DMV. Our “transformative” text will be Lorraine Daston’s Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (Princeton, 2022).

Intermediate/Advanced Modern

Professor:

Yebel Gallegos

Course Number:

DAN 216M YG

CRN Number:

10405

Class cap:

20

Credits:

1

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Fisher Performing Arts Center THORNE STUDIO

Distributional Area:

PA Practicing Arts  

This course focuses on the practical study of contemporary and early modern dance techniques. It offers an environment for students to engage in physical research and explore their personal movement patterns. This course uses various movement forms to challenge students' approach to technique while fostering artistic growth. A key emphasis will be refining movement ownership and strengthening its connection to rhythm. Students enrolling in this course and in DAN 216B MS Intermediate/Advanced Ballet have the option to take an independent study that will include light reading and writing for one additional credit.

Introduction to Community Sciences

Professor:

Elias Dueker

Course Number:

ES 115

CRN Number:

10193

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 12:30 PM Hegeman 106/ Rose Laboratories 306

Distributional Area:

LS Laboratory Science  

Using common sense and common science, students in this class will join the Bard Community Sciences Lab as it continues to work with communities in the Hudson Valley to ensure equitable access to clean air and clean water. This Lab Science class is appropriate for students of all academic backgrounds, and will focus on the interdisciplinary nature of complex local environmental issues. We will learn the sciences (including dominant Western science, Indigenous Sciences, and other ways of knowing) behind air and water quality issues, and the means by which we can use those sciences to take immediate action. This semester, priority projects include air quality monitoring inside and outside emergency and subsidized housing in Ulster County, tracking micropollutants (plastics, bacteria, forever chemicals) in drinking water sources, and integration and interpretation of environmental monitoring datasets to strengthen climate resilient decision making by regional municipal leaders. This course is deeply engaged with local community, so will involve some out-of-class meetings with community leaders and other community scientists addressing air and water quality issues.

Wicked Problems Series: Sewage

Professor:

Elias Dueker

Course Number:

ES 413

CRN Number:

10197

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Hegeman 201/ Rose Laboratories 306

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

Crosslists: Biology; Human Rights

According to the UN, over 4.2 billion people on earth do not have access to effective sanitation, including citizens of the richest countries in the world.  In New York City, NY, USA, at least 20 billion gallons of raw (untreated) human sewage spew into the Hudson River Estuary annually. Residents of Mt. Vernon, NY (located in one of the richest counties in NY state) regularly must remove solid and liquid waste from their own overflowing toilets and basements as sewer pipes that are more than 100 years old and 100 feet deep disintegrate. Humans have long known that proximity to waste causes illness, based on Indigenous science and cultural knowledge (also known as wisdom or common sense). Western science caught up with this over 100 years ago to again directly link raw sewage in water and soil to typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera, E. coli, salmonella, hookworm, and myriad other human diseases. These devastating illnesses can be eliminated with effective sanitation, yet roughly half of the human population do not have access to this protection. This seminar-style course will study the science of wastewater treatment and contemplate contemporary case studies of communities with unreliable/nonexistent waste infrastructure in the United States. Together, we will track the direct interactions of policy, science, and the societal barriers of racism, sexism, and classism on achieving equal access to adequate sanitation for all people. Through close readings of scientific literature, guest speakers (environmental justice activists, sewage scientists, climate scientists, citizen scientists), and discussions highlighting common sense/science (e.g. shared experiences of “using the bathroom”), students will participate meaningfully in the pressing pursuit of solutions to the sanitation crisis, which environmental justice activist Catherine Coleman Flowers calls “an undeniable public health disaster.”

Argentine Tango I: Exploring Human Connection

Professor:

Supervised by Leon Botstein, Practitioner: Chungin Goodstein

Course Number:

HUM T200 LB

CRN Number:

10673

Class cap:

25

Credits:

2

Schedule/Location:

  Tue  Thurs     3:30 PM - 4:50 PM

Distributional Area:

None   

Tango has a rich history and a distinct culture emerging from the socioeconomic conditions experienced by African, Caribbean and European immigrants in late 19th century Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. Today it is danced in all major cities, and at colleges and universities, around the world. This group tutorial explores the profound human connections that Argentine Tango music and dance engender. It includes discussions of the historical and cultural context of the music and dance, and the gender politics that surround it. Argentine Tango: Exploring Human Connection introduces the core vocabulary and techniques of execution for following and leading, with all students learning both roles. Tango has no set sequences of steps that are memorized and repeated: all movements are entirely improvised. The tutorial focuses on how to make and maintain a connection with one’s own body, with the partner, with the music, in the moment. Students attend at least one “milonga” or community dance event either locally, or in NYC. No partner required. Performing Arts distribution credit may be requested by petition through the Dean of Studies office.

Compassion and Compassionate Leadership

Professor:

Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz und Gaffron

Course Number:

OSUN 124

CRN Number:

10676

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM OSUN Online Class

Distributional Area:

None   

The cultivation of compassion, both as a concept as well as an embodied principle, can have personal as well as social ramifications. We will examine various notions of compassion, look at inspiring examples of compassionate actions, and reflect how compassion can be an effective practice for inner and outer transformation. Participants should feel inspired to become compassionate leaders themselves, using compassion as a powerful tool to address severe human rights violations.

Civic Engagement and Social Action

Professor:

Jonathan Becker Erin Cannan-Campolong

Course Number:

PS 209

CRN Number:

10641

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:00 AM - 11:20 AM Barringer 104

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

Crosslists: Human Rights

What does it mean to be engaged with your community? What can students participating in civic engagement projects learn from others in universities in places like Bangladesh, Haiti, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine and the United States? This course will examine historical, philosophical and practical elements of civic engagement while exploring the underlying question of what it means to be civically engaged in the early 21st century. Together, students will explore issues related to political participation, civil society, associational life, social justice, and personal responsibility, as well as how issues like race and socio-economic status impact civic participation. The class reflects a balance between study and practice of engagement which includes interrogating theoretical notions of civic life while also empowering students to be active participants in the communities in which they are situated.  The culminating project asks students to propose a civic engagement project in their home or local community. This course will feature workshops, lectures and seminar discussions.  Special classes will incorporate experiences of civic leaders, local officials, global not-for-profit leaders, and volunteers from communities proximate to participating OSUN campuses. This course uniquely combines three types of course offerings into one.  It is an OSUN Network Collaborative Course, an OSUN Online course and an Engaged Liberal Arts and Science (ELAS) course.  This means that there are multiple ways we engage with ideas and people.  For students in Annandale, additional in-person meetings will be scheduled.

The Environment and Society

Professor:

Peter Klein

Course Number:

SOC 231

CRN Number:

10278

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin Languages Center 115

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

Crosslists: American & Indigenous Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Human Rights; Science, Technology, Society

The world’s environmental problems and their solutions are not merely technical. They are profoundly social issues as well. This course explores topics such as climate change, food systems, health disparities, and natural disasters to critically assess the relationship between society and the environment at local and global scales. We explore how people collectively understand environmental issues and how social structures shape the natural environment. Most of the course is devoted to analyzing the social consequences of a changing natural world, focusing on how and why the benefits and burdens of environmental change are unequally distributed across lines of race, class, gender, and other social categories. With particular attention on environmental justice, the course also explores the ways in which scholars, citizens, and policymakers respond to these inequities and other contemporary environmental challenges.

Tricks of the Trade: Qualitative Research Practicum

Professor:

Peter Klein

Course Number:

SOC 333

CRN Number:

10282

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      9:10 AM - 11:30 AM Albee 106

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

Crosslists: American & Indigenous Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

To study social life, researchers often turn to methods of inquiry based on interviewing people, observation, or examining the meanings of texts like ads and news coverage. This course gives students instruction in how to conduct this kind of qualitative research, focusing on ethnography (participant observation), in-depth interviewing, and discourse/content analysis. The course is ideal for moderated students from various majors who plan to use these research methods for their senior project or those who are interested in pursuing social research in the future. The class offers both conceptual grounding and practical training. Students will develop and conduct a qualitative research study. To do this, students will engage epistemological questions about how we create knowledge and learn the nitty-gritty aspects of how to design and carry out research. These include techniques for taking field notes, conducting interviews, picking case studies, and interpreting and analyzing qualitative data. In the process, students will learn about debates over objectivity, power, inequality, and perspective in social research. The course offers training in research ethics and human subjects (IRB) review. Note: this course does not fulfill the sociology program 300-level seminar requirement. It does count as an elective. Note: this course does not fulfill the sociology program 300-level seminar requirement. It does count as an elective.

Extended Media I: AI in Art

Professor:

Suzanne Kite

Course Number:

ART 150 SK

CRN Number:

10371

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

Mon       2:00 PM - 5:00 PM Fisher Studio Arts 161

Distributional Area:

PA Practicing Arts  

This course, "Extended Media: AI in Art," spans 15 weeks and offers an exploration of the intersection of art that engages with extended media, artificial intelligence (AI), and Indigenous methodologies. The curriculum covers experimental approaches to the use of machine learning tools, the influence of traditional technologies on emerging ones, Indigenous and creative methodologies in artistic research, thinking through collaboration with nonhuman entities, and fundamental questions such as the origins of art, and the ethics of creating. Students will engage in experiments with digital collage, machine learning, proposing projects, and workshops with guest speakers. They will also delve into critical readings on topics like Indigenous perspectives on AI, computational biases, and the role of artists in AI development. Throughout the course, students will incrementally develop creative projects that showcase their understanding of AI in contemporary art. The semester culminates in presentations where students showcase their innovative projects, demonstrating the diverse and dynamic possibilities at the intersection of art and AI.

Art and Climate

Professor:

Adriane Colburn

Course Number:

ART 200 AC

CRN Number:

10699

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     3:30 PM - 6:30 PM Fisher Studio Arts 140

Distributional Area:

PA Practicing Arts  

Crosslists: Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies

Does art have a role to play in altering the course of the crisis of climate change? In this class we will engage in the analysis of a range of artistic practices and strategies addressing climate change. Through focused case studies, we will learn a range of artmaking techniques that use social and civic engagement as part of their structure. These will include digital skills, drawing, basic sculpture techniques.  These tools will be employed to increase visual understanding of climate change through both individual reflection and public engagement. We will dive into rigorous research including explorations of our local landscape, readings, field trips and hands-on learning.  Talks from scientists, activists, and visiting artist lectures will supplement class interaction, independent research, and team work. Prerequisite: Any 100 level Studio Art class or permission of the professor.

Sculpture II: Ceramics, FREE CLAY!

Professor:

Lauren Anderson

Course Number:

ART 205 LA

CRN Number:

10394

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

   Thurs    2:00 PM - 5:00 PM UBS Studio 1

Distributional Area:

PA Practicing Arts  

This course will serve to  introduce (or further) students’ understanding of clay as a medium and material. Emphasizing how artists use clay in formal, social, and experimental ways, and looking at how we can explore this in our own bodies of work. Demos and assignments will investigate the following: techniques of building and structure (or lack thereof), color (inherent and applied), sources (is this clay local?), collaboration (human and material), and ways of firing (or non-firing). Prerequisite: any 100 level art class, previous clay experience (with a strong willingness to break tradition), or permission of the instructor.

Extended Media II: ZINES! ZINES! ZINES!

Professor:

Adriane Colburn

Course Number:

ART 250 AC

CRN Number:

10393

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

Schedule/Location:

   Thurs    10:10 AM - 1:10 PM Fisher Studio Arts 161

Distributional Area:

PA Practicing Arts  

In this class we will explore the rich history of artist-run publications and zines as an alternative and interdisciplinary space for art, activism, experimentation and dialogue. Projects will include individual and collective works in the format of physical and digital zines, collective editions and small books. These endeavors will be organized by student driven- themes reflective of individual interests, concerns on campus and culture at large.  Through collaboration with the Hessel Museum and Stevenson Library we will explore the lively history of the artists publications through the lens of their collections. In addition, we will look to contemporary collectives, online platforms and small press endeavors to shape an understanding of the Zine of today.  In this course we will use the Adobe Creative suite with a focus on InDesign.