Open Classrooms
Open Classrooms, available on Wednesday, April 3; Friday, April 5; and April 8-April 12, invite the community to become students as they gain insight into classes in architecture design, Greek mythology, theoretical linguistics, feminism and social justice activism, Italian studies, stage movement in theater, and more.
HFA’s Open Classroom initiative is conceived in collaboration with Center for Teaching and Learning, under the Supervision of Claire Hamilton and in consultation with Bethany Lisi.
Registration is required and classes are capped based on type of class and room capacity.
Wednesday, April 3
Italian 240 - Intermediate Italian II
Melina Masterson, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
11:15 a.m. to 12:05 p.m.
Herter Hall, Room 102
Register to attend this course
Italian 240 consists of continued study of the structural and communicative components of Italian language and has the goal of further developing proficiency at the intermediate level. Building upon the intensive review of basic grammar completed in elementary Italian, students will develop mastery of essential grammatical forms, increase knowledge of specialized vocabulary, and further develop skills necessary for oral and written communication of basic ideas. Students are required to put knowledge of grammar and vocabulary into practice during in-class discussion and when completing take-home assignments. Frequent homework assignments, which include web exercises, directed readings, and written activities, will reinforce a historical and cultural understanding of the products and practices of the country and its people. Students are expected to speak in Italian at all times—learning a language takes a village and each student is vital to the functioning of our linguistic community!
Friday, April 5
Theater 341 - Stage Movement
Milan Dragicevich, Department of Theater
11:20 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
"Arts Bridge" wing of Bromery Center for the Arts, 4th Floor, Studio 413
Register to attend this course
This high-intensity physical theater course explores the evocative power of disciplined movement in an actor's performance. It is concerned with the ways imaginative gesture and sharply crafted physical decisions transform a stage performance, providing an arresting focus and charismatic strength by paring away random, weakening movements. The primary vehicle for exploring these goals will be the groundbreaking techniques and exercises developed by Japan's Tadashi Suzuki, internationally recognized theater maker and educator. This non-Western approach to actor training and development places a particular emphasis on lower body strength and awareness in the performer, while exploring an uncommon array of imaginative and riveting gestural choices.
Monday, April 8
English 891WC - Writing across the Curriculum
Haivan Hoang, Department of English
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
South College, Room E370
Register to attend this course
This graduate seminar explores the development of writing across the curriculum (WAC) in higher education; WAC is often described as an education movement that emphasizes writing to learn as well as writing in the disciplines (WID). Historians of college composition, such as David Russell, have traced the origins of writing across the curriculum to the late 19th century as universities increasingly emphasized disciplinary specialization. By the 1960s and 70s, the WAC movement began to influence academic programs, curricula, and pedagogy in US universities and British K-12 schools. In this seminar, we’ll learn about the history of WAC development in educational contexts, the ideologies underlying these movements, research on WID teaching and learning, and descriptions and analyses of WAC/WID program structures and administration. Beyond broad understanding of the WAC/WID movement, the seminar asks us more specifically to take up critiques that Donna LeCourt and Victor Villanueva raised 20-30 years ago: How might we work against assimilationist and exclusionary tendencies when teaching students to write in the disciplines? More specifically, how might we envision a critical, including anti-racist, approach to WAC/WID commitments and practices?
Tuesday, April 9
Art History 725 - Drawing in Color
Karen Kurczynski, Department of History of Art and Architecture
2:30-5:15 p.m.
South College, Room W369
Register to attend this course
This graduate M.A. seminar considers histories of race, colonialism, and categories of social identity in relation to the medium of drawing in global contemporary art from the 1990s and later. Once a preparatory format, drawing destabilizes mid-century modernist theories of artistic medium. This course examines processes of drawing that connect disparate media, such as printmaking and animation; genres, such as art and design; and communities, such as art audiences and political activists. Given its historical associations with intimacy and writing, drawing is uniquely suited to discussions that connect the personal to the political. Through specific artist case studies, the course explores current frameworks of race as it intersects with gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, decolonial politics, and history, as it develops materially in relation to open-ended and interdisciplinary drawing practices.
Wednesday, April 10
Classics 224 - Greek Mythology
Tony Tuck, Department of Classics
10:10-11 a.m.
Thompson Hall, Room 106
Register to attend this course
Dozens of Indo-European languages preserve idioms linking the process of storytelling and poetic performance to textiles. This idiom relates to a phenomenon whereby mnemonic devices taking the form of songs were (and still are) performed while textiles are manufactured. These songs encode patterning that is transformed into textile designs. Through the use of computer assisted modelling, we can see how metrical patterns preserved in ancient poetry reveal elements of these textile patterns, illuminating the hitherto ignored role of women as both the custodians and innovators of metrical performance of mythological narratives.
Architecture 404 / 603 - Design VI Studio
Erika Zekos, Department of Architecture
1-3:45 p.m.
Design Building, Room 380
Register to attend this course
In this architecture design studio, students explore critical, participatory, and process-focused strategies for community based design practices—to consider how the agents with whom we design, and the practices with which we engage them, shapes, alters, and informs our processes, our outcomes, and our larger professional practice. Public Interest Design as practitioners broadly address both public needs and the underlying systemic problems that create these needs. In this course, there is a strong emphasis on linking the professional and theoretical underpinnings of community-focused, participatory architectural practice through partnership with a local nonprofit. Students and organization participants co-identify and design a meaningful intervention.
Linguistics 201 - How Language Works: Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics
Kyle Johnson, Department of Linguistics
1:25-2:15 p.m.
Integrative Learning Center, Room S211
Register to attend this course
This class introduces students to some of the techniques and discoveries in contemporary linguistic analysis. Theoretical linguistics builds models of the cognitive processes that underlie our ability to use and perceive language. In this class, we will learn how to model the sound-stream, the “melodies,” that represent morphemes. Morphemes, the elementary meaningful units of a language, are used to construct words, and this class will introduce some of the processes involved in building words. And finally, we will learn how words are grouped to form larger meaningful units, like sentences. The class includes some information about how these cognitive processes are acquired by children. It is a required course for all linguistics majors, and satisfies the Analytical Reasoning general education requirement.
Thursday, April 11
Art 490STB - Topics in Design: Public Art
Jeffery Kasper, Department of Art
1-3:45 p.m.
Studio Arts Building, Room 240
Register to attend this course
This course focuses on the analysis, planning, design, and facilitation of creative projects for public spaces in the United States. Students will gain practical experience and knowledge of the design process for public art. The course begins with an introduction to public art practice, including a brief history and exploration of public art and design in its social context. Topics to be covered include the evaluation of public projects, controversies, temporary works, the roles that stakeholders play in the process, how artist selection occurs, funding and commissions, educational programming, and the role that public art plays in communities.
WGSS 393A - Feminism and Social Justice Activism
Laura Briggs, Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
1-2:15 p.m.
South College, Room E470
Register to attend this course
What are the problems that activists are trying to solve? How do feminist, queer, and trans activists come to have such an outsized role in so many movements—from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition to climate justice, immigration, and indigenous land and water struggles? Why is this the case from Idle No More in Canada to Fees Must Fall in South Africa to the movement to overthrow the governor in Puerto Rico? This course will explore the issues in contemporary movements through histories, writings, and conversations with contemporary activists.
HFA 101 - Traversing Differences with Critical and Creative Thinking: Local Questions
Una Tanovic, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
1-2:15 p.m.
Herter Hall, Room 212
Register to attend this course
“Traversing Differences with Critical and Creative Thinking: Local Questions” is one of two Cornerstone Gateway Courses at UMass Amherst, designed to foster a renewed appreciation for the humanities within general education by creating a community of learning and teaching grounded in transformative texts and interactive classrooms. This discussion-based, interdisciplinary course encourages students to engage deeply with a diverse array of texts ranging from philosophical, historical, and sociological writings to fiction and poetry in order to think through issues that are critical to US culture[s], past and present, including social and environmental justice, human rights, the role of technology, the place of the arts, and how to understand and mediate among differences. In short, this course is designed to enable students to challenge their understanding of themselves and reflect on how they navigate the world as ethical human beings.
Philosophy 336 - Existentialism
Ernesto Garcia, Department of Philosophy
4-5:15 p.m.
South College, Room E241
Register to attend this course
We'll be discussing the second half of Tolstoy's famous short story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". This classic existentialist work focuses on the themes of authenticity and inauthenticity, especially in terms of the individual in relation to society and their own mortality. Some topics we'll discuss include: How can we live our lives authentically? What does it mean to be alienated from ourselves? And how should the universal reality of death affect how we think about and live our lives in general?
Friday, April 12
History 394AI - Age of the Crusades
Anne Broadbridge, Department of History
10:10-11 a.m.
Herter Hall, Room 201
Register to attend this course
Students will study the history of the Age of the Crusades (1090s-1290s). They will cover the eight major crusades to the Middle East and North Africa, including personalities, ideologies, and military and logistical challenges. They will investigate the European Crusaders, those Muslim, Christian and Jewish who were "Crusaded Against", and the cultural interactions among them all. Student will also examine Crusades in Europe, and Crusades of later centuries.
Music Education 211 - Instrumental Techniques for Bassoon
Rémy Taghavi, Department of Music and Dance
1:25-2:15 p.m.
Bromery Center for the Arts, Room 150
Register to attend this course
Music education majors are all required to take a half-semester course on all wind, brass, and string instruments in order to build competency in anticipation of their future careers as band and orchestra directors. This course covers the basics of bassoon playing as well as relevant topics such as repertoire and maintenance.