As one of the oldest artistic forms, theatre has been an enduring witness to the vicissitudes of art and society. This course will offer a survey of the creative dimensions of theatre, such as dramatic literature, directing, acting, scenography, lighting, costume etc. It will also introduce you to the various occupations of this collaborative art, such as director, playwright, dramaturg, designer, producer etc. Meanwhile, we will inquire about the relation between theatre and space, history, politics and society and contemplate our roles as audience and critics in the theatrical experience. The goal for this course is to offer students the means to discuss theatrical experiences (either as theatre makers or spectators) as well as a great variety of theatrical traditions and provide a basis for their future endeavors with this art form. This will require students to have a sound grasp of the course readings, reflect on them critically, articulate their own ideas, and eventually formulate their own understanding of this art form.

This course will introduce you to the various elements of the theatre with particular attention to the following inquiries: What is theatre? How is it created? What are the various occupations in the theatre? What is the position of theatre in society? My goal for this course is to give you the means to discuss theatrical experiences (either as theatre makers or spectators) as well as a great variety of theatrical traditions and provide a basis for your future endeavors with this art form. This will be based on lectures, readings, in-class discussions, and seeing four theatrical productions in person.

COURSE GOALS

Develop an appreciation for literature and its analysis as part of encountering and understanding the world and its regions in a cultural and historical context;
Develop close reading skills to interpret literary texts across different genres;
Develop familiarity with some conventional disciplinary language and its use to think about how texts work (for example, assessing literary works in terms of voice, tone, and structure);
Understand how context works with ideas to produce the meaning of a text;
Use both informal and formal writing as opportunities to discover one’s own ideas in conversation with the ideas of others;
Write a thoughtful, analytical and coherent essay that is firmly grounded in the text and adheres to MLA guidelines.

In this class we will examine a constellation of British “realist” novels that are set in fictional county towns in England. Fictional towns such as Coketown and Mudfog in Dickens’ work (based on Preston in Lancashire), Wessex in Thomas Hardy’s (said to include Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire among others), Raveloe and Middlemarch in George Eliot’s (speculated to be based on Coventry in Warwickshire), Barchester in Trollope’s (said to be based on a combination of Winchester and Exeter).

The course studies the topographical imagination in these realist novels. It asks: What does the decision to rename a place that is adjacent to an actual place do for the symbolic construction of that reality? How do these fictional spaces explore the heterogeneities of the periphery as distinct from (and similar to) the popular metropolitan characterizations of the peripheries? How do they attend to the specific vernacular language-scapes of these regions? How does the chronotope of these regionally-specific novels explore the working conditions and social life in smaller industrial and semi-rural parts of England?

In this course, we will treat fictional spatial geography as an essential part of time, narrative and plot-construction of the realist novel. Studying theories of the novel such as Bakhtin’s “chronotope” and Paul Ricoeur’s “threefold mimesis” we see how the fictional naming of spaces provides the opportunity for salience, symbolism and specificity in realist novels. Realism, therefore, is not an exercise in inventorying reality, but imaginatively constructing it (what Barthes, noting the lack of novelistic cohesion in Flaubert, calls the “reality effect” in his 1989 essay of the same title). The fictionalization of actual spaces allows the reader to avoid easy identifications or preconceptions and instead “come into” the constructed world of realist narrative. It is in this manner that the realist novel inscribes within itself the seemingly opposite paradigm of escapism and representation. Keeping in mind this dialectic between the imagined and the real, we will explore the multiple realisms that emerge from the deliberately selected sample size of Victorian realist novels included in this course, and how their regional and fictional vantage point allows them to respond to the modernizing epoch of the Victorian era and the crises that lie therein.

The course offers a History of Western music through the study of various complete works. Focus on the skills and perspectives needed for informed listening. There are three main topics to which this course provides an introduction: First, the sonic structure of music, apprehended through analytical listening. This is centrally concerned with the musical elements of rhythm, pitch, timbre, and dynamics, both for themselves as well as for the ways in which they are organized into melody, harmony, texture, form, and, ultimately, style and genre. Second, the history of the main genres and stylistic trends in the notated music of Europe and North America over the last millennium. Third, the interaction of music with its various contexts: social, religious, technological, performative, commercial, artistic, and intellectual.

Exploring Music (aka Introduction to Music) examines how music communicates and embodies social and personal ideas, beliefs, and values relevant to both music makers and users. Musical elements and listening skills are introduced and developed throughout the course in order to explicate musical meanings. We will investigate topics such as music and love, music and gender, music and politics, war, ethnicity, et cetera. We will also examine how these topics are embedded in different genres of music, including popular music, world music, and Western art music (also known as classical music). No previous musical expertise such as knowledge of musical notation is required to succeed in this class. At the end of this semester, students will better understand how different musics function within their social context.

Medical anthropology examines how health and illness, as well as medical knowledge and practice, are shaped not only by culture but also by social, political and economic realities. In this course you will be introduced to the key theoretical frameworks, concepts and debates that have shaped this vast subfield of cultural anthropology. Together, we will draw on this knowledge to critically examine questions of cultural difference, power, and inequality in relation to local and global current events as well as our own experiences of health, illness and medical care. On this site you will find all of the readings, assignments and resources associated with the course as well as a virtual space to connect with each other beyond the classroom.

In this course, we examine contemporary discourse and practice around writing instruction in the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. School-based composition is often framed and assessed as a specific set of discrete skills that can be developed through decontextualized “best practices.” We will interrogate the assumptions about writing and literacy that sustain these practices and contextualize them within larger (settler) colonial projects. Ultimately, we will develop our own writing philosophies and associated curricular innovations and pedagogical moves.

Specifically, throughout this course, we will:

Review the social, historical, and political contexts that shape contemporary approaches to standards-based writing instruction
Investigate our assumptions about the writing process and our conceptions of “good” writing
Explore the challenges, tensions, and possibilities of a decolonial educational framework
Develop a range of creative, collaborative, and nontraditional approaches to standards-based writing instruction

Read more about the course design:
Mina Rees Library | Drafting Possible Futures
https://gclibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2020/05/06/oer-drafting-possible-futures/

See also: Drafting Possible Futures: An Open-Access Handbook for English Educators
Link: https://764handbook.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
This website was collaboratively created by students enrolled in Multimodal Writing in the Standards-Based ELA Classroom. Students wrote the introduction and all chapters, and two student editors reviewed all pieces and created the website design. The result is a document that can be used by any ELA teachers as well as future English Education students.

This class is primarily skills-oriented; here are some of the things you will be able to do by the end of our time together:

Read and write many aspects of Western classical music notation
Analyze and describe music (both written and heard) using vocabulary and concepts of Western classical music theory
Perform rhythms and melodies, both from call & response with a group leader and from reading notation
Specific topics include: pitch, rhythm, meter, major and minor scales, keys and key signatures, intervals, and triads and seventh chords

In addition to the practical aspects of the course, we will also think critically about music by asking the following questions (and more!):

What am I hearing?
Who is playing this and in what context?
How has my understanding of music been shaped by my personal life experiences and in what ways might that understanding differ from people of different times and spaces?
What is music theory and how does it help me?

Knowing how to think, reason, and argue well is essential for success in all disciplines and in everyday life. The aim of this course is to strengthen and develop your critical thinking skills; you will learn how to make good arguments and how to critically evaluate the arguments of others. The first two third of this course will examine the principles of clear and accurate thought, including sound and valid arguments and methods of rigorous reasoning. The rest of the course will look at everyday ethical issues with the skills we developed earlier in the semester.

After completing this course, you should be able to:

reconstruct and evaluate arguments
identify premise(s) and conclusion(s) of an argument
identify logical fallacies in an argument
use symbols to represent arguments
determine truth values of a proposition
apply critical thinking skills to everyday issues
present your thoughts verbally and textually in a logical manner
predict and handle potential objections to your view

This course is structured to address three pillars of contemporary applied anthropology:
Anthropological methods for research and analysis
Social policy: understanding how anthropology intersects with policy concerns
Communicating results through impactful delivery: writing for public audiences; preparation of policy papers; formulation of research goals and design for funding proposals

In addition to learning and practicing essential skills of social research and analysis, students will produce several kinds of materials through their work in the Lab:

Analysis of issues, written for public engagement and education on Lab website, and as part of the Lab’s ongoing database of issues, resources, and results;
Policy papers of use to local institutions and community partners;
Proposals for further research, funding, and community-level engagement.

Performance surrounds us every day and has always been a vital part of conveying narrative. Oral Interpretation is “the art of communicating to an audience a work of literary art in its intellectual emotional and aesthetic entirety.” (Gura, 2010 Oral Interpretation) I look forward to working with you all as we explore storytelling through children’s literature to bring to life the words on a page.

This semester we will work on communication and interpretation skills by exploring storytelling cultures through a study of children’s literature and related texts that have been told and retold for generations. We will do this by tapping into our creativity through a combination of oral presentations and written work. This course is a space for experimenting with techniques of presentation and our own interpretation of the stories and performances that surround us.

Welcome to Performing Asia on the Global Stage!

This course explores Asian identity in theatre and performance in the global context.

How are Asians represented in works created by Asian artists and artists from other cultural backgrounds? What challenges and progress do Asian theatre and performance face in the historical and contemporary world of multiple cultures?

Students will engage with various modes of performing Asia on the global stage, including theatre Orientalism, intercultural theatre, diaspora theatre and performance, and theatre translation. At the end of this semester, students will gain a deeper understanding of the nebulous connections between theatre and performance and ethnic and cultural identity.

Instructors are welcome to utilize resources provided in this open syllabus for their classes within the parameters of the Creative Commons licence. Note that for each week, this syllabus provides a diverse pool of open-access and non-open-access readings and resources. Instructors may choose which ones to use based on the students’ institutional support for access.

This course is designed to introduce the physical concepts that explain the workings of the universe to non-science majors. The use of mathematics is limited and subordinate to the physical concepts being addressed. Examples from daily life are used to both illustrate the physical concepts and make them relevant to students. Laboratory exercises are performed in the classroom to explain the scientific method and to allow students to learn how to perform experiments and compose a lab report.

Physics 110LB: General Introductory Physics Laboratory Exercises (Electricity, Magnetism, Light, and Atomic Physics)

In person, this lab class was designed to allow students to obtain hands-on experience in semi-formal laboratory settings. The goal of this design was two-fold: to give students a visual and tactile understanding of the basic principles of physics; and to give students a taste of the world of scientific research and literature.

Due to the COVID-19, we can no longer have in-person lab class. To fill this gap, we turn to online simulations which model real world experiments, albeit with simplified physics. While these simulations are helpful, we should go into this class understanding that the simplified physics removes the key factor of error in measurement and manual labor, but gives us more expected results. In other words, the labs looked cooler in person, but these simulations should give you the results you want much more easily.

Our modified goals for our online lab class are as follows:

To utilize simulations for their visual and semi-tactile representations of basic physics.
To enter into the world of academic research papers and its language, format, and style.

The first in a three-semester introductory sequence for beginners. Emphasis on basic social functions, simple conversation, readings, and writing. Introduction to the cultures where Portuguese is spoken.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

Talk about home duties and and leisure from their everyday life.
Distinguish and conjugate verbs estar and
Conjugate verbs in present tense.
Talk about actions that occur in near future.
Describe objects and actions from their university.
Describe and talk about their families.
Get in touch with contemporary music, films and literature from different Portuguese speaking countries.

This course introduces the aspects of programming that can support business analytics. The course covers hands-on issues in programming for analytics which include accessing data, creating informative data graphics, writing functions, debugging, and organizing and commenting code.

This course introduces the aspects of programming that can support business analytics. The course covers hands-on issues in programming for analytics which include accessing data, creating informative data graphics, writing functions, debugging, and organizing and commenting code.

This course examines the role of gender, sex, and sexuality in different forensic contexts. Students will explore the differential impacts of gender, sex, and sexuality on crime victimization and perpetration. For example, the course will examine issues related to family violence, sex trafficking, and hate crime, among other crimes, and the impacts of gender, sex, and sexuality in these areas. Additionally, the response of the legal and law enforcement systems to different gender and sexual identities will be examined. The implications of gender, sex, and sexuality on crime victimization and perpetration, and law enforcement involvement will be examined with a particular emphasis on LGBTQ+ issues. The course emphasizes the responsibility of mental health clinicians, researchers, and others working with gender and sexual minorities in forensic arenas to properly assess issues through a lens that addresses queer issues.

Course Objectives:
To examine the role of psycho-active substances in human cultures and societies through interdisciplinary perspectives, e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, biology, and public health
To increase knowledge of the effects of different psychoactive substances on the individual and society
To facilitate open and honest communication the nature of substance use, abuse and addiction