HFA Days: Open Classrooms

Research Forum

Pari Riahi, Architecture
11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., Olver Design Building 225

This course explores a variety of approaches to research in architecture, helping students develop their interests and configure methods and processes that will allow them to advance in their thesis projects. While exploring the landscape of research, in writing and drawing, issues of agency, creativity, and positionality are discussed to situate each student’s interest within a larger and more nuanced fabric of social, cultural, and environmental landscape.

European Art 1780-1880

Gülru Çakmak, History of Art and Architecture
2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m, South College E245

This course examines European art and visual culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing on painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, and photography. We begin with the ornate and playful Rococo, which gives way to Neoclassicism’s idealized vision of a new world. Next, we explore Romanticism, born from disillusionment with Enlightenment ideals and an interest in the darker aspects of human experience. Realism follows, reflecting contemporary life after the Revolution of 1848. The course concludes with the rise of modernism, highlighting Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as artists reimagine perception, technique, and the possibilities of visual representation in a rapidly changing Europe.

Tokyo Through Literature & Film

Amanda Seaman, Languages, Literatures and Cultures
10:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m., Herter Hall 107

In this course we will explore the transformation of Edo into one of the most vibrant, cosmopolitan cities of the world. Using the themes of destruction, regeneration, and community, as well as the role of space in identity formation, we will look at how the city has been transformed and reborn. Our materials will include film, photos, literature, and history to delve into the nooks and crannies of the city and the city spaces. You do not have to have been to Tokyo or to have any knowledge of Japanese to be able to take this class.

Grassroots Movements

Daisy Guzman Nunez, Afro-American Studies
11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., New Africa House 2

This Course uses the critical methodologies of the humanities and the social sciences to consider some of the questions provoked by the Global Black experience. Course Materials will allow students to survey the lasting contributions of Africans and their descendants to the development of various world civilizations and examine historical relationships between the individual actors and the larger social forces. The major themes that will be used to comprehend the experience of African-descended people are Loss, Identity, Gender, and Sexuality. A combination of student-led conversation and lecture will be used in the classroom.

Mongol & Turkish Empires

Anne Broadbridge, History
10:10 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., Herter Hall 205

In this course students investigate the history of Genghis Khan and the Great Mongol Empire, the Mongol Successor Empires, and the copycat Temurid Empire, covering the time period 1150-1500. They look at the rise, expansion and fall of these empires, and at the complexities that make this history so gripping. They also learn unexpected secrets about the contributions made by Chinggis Khan?s womenfolk to this history, based on new research. Students will reflect on themselves as students and history majors, on their college careers so far, and on what they have learned in their college careers.

Roman Law & Society

Lauren Caldwell, Classics
11:15 a.m. to 12:05 p.m., Herter Hall 225

In this course, we'll learn about the legal and court systems of the Roman Empire. We'll analyze legal cases, consider law enforcement practices, and read courtroom speeches that survive from ancient Rome. Our goals are to practice legal reasoning, to investigate the development of legal rules over time, and to understand the operation of the law in a pre-modern society.

Death & the Meaning of Life

Ned Markosian, Philosophy
1:25 p.m. to 2:15 p.m., Integrative Learning Center S240

This course examines a number of questions about death and the meaning of life, including the following: What exactly are life and death? What is dying? How should we think about death if we are Materialists (that is, if we do not believe we have immaterial souls)? How should we think about death if we do think that we have immaterial souls? How can your death be bad for you, given that before you die it hasn’t happened yet and after you die you no longer exist? Would immortality be a good thing? What sort of afterlife is it reasonable to hope for? If grief is the appropriate attitude after the death of a loved one, and if it remains true forever after that that loved one has died, is it rational to feel diminishing grief as time goes by? If resentment and blame are the appropriate attitudes after someone has done something seriously morally wrong, is it ever rational (or even possible) to forgive a person for doing something seriously morally wrong? Is there something that can make lives like ours meaningful? If so, what is it? Does the fact that we will all die make our lives meaningless? What about the fact that the universe will one day evolve to be cold and lifeless? If the end of the story is already written, why does it matter what the details are along the way? What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Is there some reason or purpose for our existence? Is there a goal that all of us should be aiming for? Didn’t we learn from the tragic events of the 20th Century that there is no God and our existence is pointless? Some say we are here to love one another. But the world is full of injustice. Could it be that anger is a more appropriate attitude than love? Are the two compatible? Some have argued that given how difficult, painful, and ultimately futile our lives are, each one of us would have been better off not existing. How should we respond to this? Could our lives be meaningful if we live in a Godless universe?

Diction for Singers

Jamie-Rose Guarrine, Music and Dance
2:30 p.m. to 3:20 p.m., Bromery Center for Arts 152

This is a laboratory performance course in Italian and French diction for singers, utilizing the International Phonetic Alphabet. This is the second semester course in Language Diction for Singers. First semester, students studied English and German Diction. Second semester, we move to Italian and French Diction. In this course, students develop a working knowledge of IPA, become equipped with Italian and French language diction tools to become effective singers and educators, develop the ability to transcribe song literature into IPA, and explore Italian and French Art Song performance literature through a variety of musical styles and genres.

Advanced Computational Linguistics

Gaja Jarosz, Linguistics
4:00 p.m. to 5:15 p.m., Integrative Learning Center N155

This course is the second semester course in computational linguistics, the study of natural language from a computational perspective. Computational linguistics encompasses both applied (engineering) and theoretical (cognitive) issues, and in this course you will get a taste of both, with more emphasis on the latter. You will learn how to write programs to automatically process and analyze linguistic structure in language corpora. You will learn how formal language models (grammars) can be implemented computationally and used to represent linguistic structure at various levels. You will use these formal language models to automatically analyze (assign structure to) linguistic data and to model linguistic knowledge, and you will see how these models can be trained using language corpora. A major focus of the course will be on statistical techniques, especially Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood learning, because statistical approaches such as these are the foundation of much current work in computational linguistics.

The Ghosts of Literature

Katherine O’Callaghan, English
12:20 p.m. to 1:10 p.m., South College W211

In this course we explore examples of short stories, novels, poetry and drama, from various theoretical perspectives. Each text is examined on its own terms, but some general themes emerge as the course progresses. In particular, students of “The Ghosts of Literature” are asked to consider the myriad ways in which the idea of haunting might be applied to a literary text. Literary heritage, intertextual influence, remnants of lost languages, ghost stories, and themes of absence, loss, and returns all recur throughout the semester.

Theatrical Frontiers

Harley Erdman, Theater
1:00 p.m. to 2:15 p.m., ILC S231

This course explores the art of contemporary theater and the power of live performance. Through engagement with both longstanding and new ways of making theater, students will gain exposure to how live theater is being made in the world today -- an exciting moment of new frontiers and forms.

Unthinking the Transnational

Svati Shah, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m., South College W219

This course reviews the framework of ‘transnationalism’ in women’s, gender and sexuality studies. We will survey the field of transnational feminist research and praxis, locating structures of power, practices of resistance, and the geographies of development at work in a range of theories and social movements. The course examine the implementation of feminist politics and projects, and the ways that conceptions of the ‘global’ and ‘transnational’ have informed these efforts. Students will have the opportunity to assess which of these practices can be applicable, transferable, and/or travel on a global scale. The theme for this year’s IE seminar accounts for disturbing political trends on campus, in the US, and internationally. Assigned readings will reflect some of these themes, which include the rise of fascism, autocracy, white supremacy, and the erosion of democratic governance in some parts of the world.

Environmental History of the Middle East

Malissa Taylor, Judaic and Near Eastern Studies
2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m., Herter Hall 117

In this class, we will examine the often-neglected role of nature in the history of the Middle East. According to many scholars in this relatively new field of inquiry, the environment has played an under-appreciated role in everything from economic patterns to political crises; and from cultural diffusion to nation building. Frequently, religion and culture are presented as the crucial forces driving events in this region.  Environmental history presents a very different analysis of change and continuity in the Middle East and North Africa and can enrich our understanding of what factors have shaped the region.