Image: https://download.unsplash.com/photo-1433785567155-bf5530cab72c Liberal Studies and History/Theory Electives // Fall 2015
LIBERAL STUDIES AND HISTORY/THEORY ELECTIVES, FALL 2015 Old Curriculum (for students who enrolled in degree programs prior to Fall 2013) HUMANITIES: SSH2004 Modern and Contemporary Art (Not an elective for BIA students) SSH1100 The Human Body: Histories and Possibilities SOCIAL SCIENCES: SSH1013 History and Modernity: The Idea of Empire* SSH1013 Ideas and Society: Film, Space, Perception* *SSH1013 is a required course but a second SSH1013 course may be taken as an elective PHYSICAL SCIENCES: MNS1003 Botany (Not an elective for LA students) MNS2004 Ecology Systems (Not an elective for LA students) MNS2009 Plant Taxonomy (Not an elective for LA students) MNS1002 Physics* (Not an elective for BArch students; Pre-req: AS167/MNS1001) ARTS & SCIENCES OR LIBERAL STUDIES: ART1100 Intro to Applied Music Theory DME2006 Watercolor Rendering OR any of the above courses HISTORY/THEORY: HSP2011 American Architecture: Colonial to Post Modern HTC2001 History of Architecture and Design 1 (Not an elective for BArch, BDS, or MArch students) HTC2002 History of Architecture and Design 2 (Not an elective for BArch, BDS or MArch students) HTC2003 Contemporary Architecture (Not an elective for BArch or MArch) HTC2013 History of Landscape Architecture 1 (Not an elective for BLA or MLA) HT325/7325 History of Interior Design and Furniture (Not an elective for BIA or MIA students) HTC3011 Architecture & Society (by permission) HTC3012 History and Theory of Interior Architecture *for LA students-physical Science elective is not required but can take as an AS Elective New Curriculum (for students who enrolled in degree programs starting in Fall 2013 up to the present) SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES: SSH1002 History and Modernity: The Idea of Empire (Only an elective for BLA) SSH2004 Modern and Contemporary Art (Only an elective for BLA and BDS) ARTS: SSH1010 Social Psychology SSH1100 The Human Body: Histories and Possibilities SSH1013 Ideas and Society: Film, Space, Perception ART1100 Intro to Applied Music Theory ART2003 Freehand Drawing DME2006 Watercolor Rendering MATHEMATICS AND NATURAL SCIENCES: MNS2004 Ecology Systems (Not an elective for LA students) MNS1002 Physics* (Not an elective for BArch students; Pre-req: MNS1001) MNS1003 Botany (Not an elective for LA students) *for LA students-physical Science elective is not required but can take as an AS Elective HISTORY/THEORY: HSP2011 American Architecture: Colonial to Post Modern HTC2003 Contemporary Architecture (Only an elective for BIA) HTC2013 History of Landscape Architecture 1 (Not an elective for BLA or MLA students) HT325/7325 History of Interior Design and Furniture (Not an elective for BIA or MIA students) HTC3011 Architecture & Society (by permission) HTC3012 History and Theory of Interior Architecture (Only an elective for M.Arch) MNS2009 Plant Taxonomy(Not an elective for LA students)
// HUMANITIES Image: http://mrg.bz/raskdf SSH2004 Modern and Contemporary Art This course explores this essence of Modernism through a survey of the major movements in the visual arts and design, starting around 1880, but quickly expanding from there to a global scale in the contemporary era. Developing historically within the framework of industrialism and advanced capitalism, colonialism and class conflict, this course follows the course of global art history amidst political upheaval, globalization, and the digital revolution, we will conclude with a consideration of the international developments in the art world beyond the West, and the influences of museums, the art market, the art-fair, and artistic practice then and now. Wednesdays 4 7 pm In 1927, the British art critic Roger Fry stated that what is important in a work of art is not what is represented, but how it is represented. Proceeding from a similar thesis, but writing with the historical hindsight of the rise, flourish, and fulfillment of Modernist art, the American critic Clement Greenberg summarized that the essence of Modernism is the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.
// HUMANITIES Image: https://download.unsplash.com/46/yzs7sdljrrwkrpmvd0la_creditcard.jpg SSH1100 The Human Body: Histories and Possibilities Mondays 4 7 pm This course will explore histories and cross-cultural modes of imagining and manipulating the human body. We will use readings and examples from history, anthropology, and critical theory to explore questions like: What is the human body for? What are the limits of what it can do? Where does the human body end? How does the body end? In what ways does the body relate to the world including other human bodies? How can a body be modified or extended or otherwise transformed? What kinds of tensions do we have with our bodies? How have we tried to control them, our own, and others? How do we imagine what gets embodied (mind, energy, divinity)? How do we come to value or privilege some kinds of bodies and not others? Our class materials will engage topics including: race, gender, cultural politics of body image, disability movements, neurodiversity, drugs, cyborgs, transcendentalism, asceticism, diet, injury, torture, psychoanalysis, organ transplantation, fashion.
// SOCIAL SCIENCE Image: http://mrg.bz/bb17mp SSH1013 History and Modernity:The Idea of Empire Tuesdays 4 7 pm History and Modernity: The Idea of Empire traces the expansion of modern empires from approximately 1800 to their collapse and the post-colonial world of the late twentieth century. Students will view empire using multiple lenses, including gender, race, religion, technology and medicine and education.
// SOCIAL SCIENCE SSH1013 Ideas & Society: Film, Space & Perception With the advent of film, animation and virtual environments, have our methods of perception and understanding (as well as our modes of expression) changed radically? The goal of this course is to investigate in what ways the moving image may have influenced our perceptual apparatus. We ll investigate topics such as: historic changes in perception; perception v. experience a new take on phenomenology; cultural implications of time & space; film as a frame of reference for a new language of perception. Objectives for this course are: to be comfortable critically assessing scholarly work done by others on key topics such as perception, representation, space, time, place, etc.; to make associations between our world and its filmic portrayal; to be able to articulate and discuss these abstract concepts and to encourage original research through the development of a semesterlong thesis research paper and accompanying film. Tuesdays 4 7 pm Image: http://mrg.bz/comnv6
// SOCIAL SCIENCE Image: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1433650552684-d4004a945d6c?q=80&fm=jpg&s=2952b1a2bc599decd104edd6367300b5 SSH1010 Social Psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of the way people think, feel, and behave in social situations. It involves understanding how individuals think about the world, how they understand themselves and others, and how they formulate perspectives on the world. In addition, social psychology enlightens us to the development of prejudice and stereotypes. A primary goal of this course is to introduce you to the perspectives, research methods, and seminal findings in the field of social psychology. Equally important is the goal of allowing you to cultivate your skills for analyzing the various social situations and events that you encounter in your everyday lives. Thursdays 4 7 pm
// ARTS Image: http://mrg.bz/a6qtbf ART1100 Introduction to Applied Music Theory This course offers students the opportunity to explore music theory at an introductory level. Students will learn about different musical cultures and practices, how to read music and the basics of music composition. The course includes interactive and performance components throughout to support the concepts learned. PLEASE NOTE: No prior musical experience is necessary; as an introductory course, this class will be geared toward individuals with no musical training. Mondays 7:15 10:15 pm
// HISTORY/THEORY HSP2011 American Architecture: Colonial to Post Modern This course examines American architecture from the first colonial settlements through Postmodernism. Because a building s style is inextricably influenced by its context, architectural developments will be analyzed in relation to their historical, cultural, social, and regional milieu. The course will study significant buildings and designers to facilitate a deeper understanding of specific styles, periods of development, relationships between buildings, and architects influences upon one another. Major buildings of each period will be used as case studies to illustrate these themes and to examine the formal aspects of composition and construction that define buildings and structures as products of particular places and times. Tuesdays 4 7 pm Image: https://download.unsplash.com/photo-1433840496881-cbd845929862
// HISTORY/THEORY Image: https://download.unsplash.com/photo-1429042007245-890c9e2603af HTC3011 Architecture and Society: Global and Local Tenuously Inhabiting the Post-Place World Now, on conquests of our own, we can travel for business in a week as far as Marco Polo and his partners did in a quarter of a century. A Boston architecture firm partners with a London developer to obtain financing from Frankfurt for an office tower in Dubai, which will ultimately house regional offices for corporations that exist simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at all. News large and small arrives instantly from across the world; money, images, language, and strategies all traverse fiber-optic cable faster than thought.what does it mean to be local, or to be sensitive to local cultures? This online, reading- and writing-intensive course will ask you to investigate how our placeless world came to be; what has been gained, and by whom; at what costs, exacted from whom; and how you might find your own footing on unstable ground. Online Course For most of human history, travel was difficult and demanding. As a result, innumerable local cultures grew up, with a vast array of language and food and clothing and rituals. The explorer was a rare and storied figure whose conquests whether military or mercantile were legendary.
// HISTORY/THEORY Image: http://littlevisuals.co/page/3 HTC3011 Architecture & Society Architecture and Society is a curricular home for graduate courses that aim to understand social, ethical, and political issues as they relate to architecture. These courses place emphasis on the discipline of architecture as a practice that participates in the public sphere and in doing so, has the opportunity to perpetuate or transform existing notions of social justice, collective identities, or cultural and political inclusion. Course contents in Architecture and Society invite students to inquire into, and to reflect upon, various approaches to defining cultural, social, and political values, and on architecture s responsibilities to the public at large. Wednesdays 7:15 pm 10:15 pm