Month: August 2018

DANC 213
Professor Joya Powell
TR 6:30-8:10pm
Schonberg Dance Studio

This course is an introduction to the African American jazz dance vernacular through the embodied practice of Simonson jazz. It will cover basic principles of alignment, centering, and technique through the context of jazz’s African roots. Class sessions will principally consist of movement exploration including a comprehensive warm-up and will be supplemented by online discussions and media to better understand the place of jazz dance in society and culture at large.

DANC 371
Professor Pedro Alejandro
TR 2:50-4:20

This course addresses the construction of contemporary performance in alternative, nontheatrical spaces. Students will create, design, and structure movement and image metaphors; design and realize scenic objects; and integrate technologies that enhance performance at large. Daily practice will focus on developing compositional tools to trigger events, to set off the performance space, and to create optimal conditions for audience and performer participation. Skills in movement observation, critical reading, and video analysis will inform the course’s practical and historical frameworks. Student’s from all divisions are encouraged to pursue enrollment in this course.  Students with interests in making performance of any kind and/or analyzing culture from the lenses of “performance” are encouraged to seek enrollment.  All levels of physical skills, training, and abilities welcomed.  If interested, you may show up to the first day of class, or contact the professor via email at palejandro@wesleyan.edu.

DANC 362
Bharata Natyam II: Embracing the Traditional and the Modern
Professor Hari Krishnan
MW 1.20-2.40pm

This advanced course is designed to further students’ understanding of the technique, history, and changing nature of Bharata Natyam dance and of Indian classical dance in general. The primary aim of the course is to foster an understanding of the role, function, and imaging of Bharata Natyam dance vis-à-vis ideas about tradition and modernity. Although the course assumes no prior knowledge of Bharata Natyam, we will move rapidly through the material. We will focus mainly on more complex studio work, extensive readings, and video presentations. In preparation for this course, students should have movement experience in other dance tradition(s). Occasionally, the class could include a guest lecture given by either a visiting scholar, dancer, or choreographer respected in the field of South Asian dance internationally.

CHUM 302
Professor Heather Vermeulen
Thurs 1:20-4:10
CHUM 302

The genre of black speculative fiction–in the form of literature, art, music, and theory–provides a generative framework through which to (re)think understandings of race, gender, sexuality, class, the body, disability, citizenship, and the human. Often couched as taking place in the “future,” black speculative fictions also engage the past and critique the present. This makes the genre a critical resource for addressing the Anthropocene. The term “Anthropocene” first emerged from the discipline of geology in 2000. Scientists proposed that Earth had entered a new epoch (following the Holocene) in which “humans” had become geological forces, impacting the planet itself. However, the term Anthropocene raises numerous questions. What does it mean to think about the human at the level of a “species”? What constitutes evidence of the Anthropocene and when did it begin? Who is responsible for the Anthropocene’s attendant catastrophes, which include earthquakes, altered ocean waters, and massive storms? Does the Anthropocene overemphasize the human and thus downplay other interspecies and human-nonhuman, animate-inanimate relations? Or does it demand a (potentially fruitful) reconceptualization of the human? Further, how does artificial intelligence complicate definitions of the human and, by extension, of the Anthropocene? Centering the work of black speculative thinkers and placing it in conversation with scientific studies ranging from marine biology and geology to cybernetics, this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the Anthropocene that endeavors to (re)conceptualize the human, ecological relations, and Earth itself. Texts engaged will include: novels, art, music, theory, and scientific studies.
Major Readings:

Select primary sources: Octavia Butler, DAWN; N. K. Jemisin, THE FIFTH SEASON; Samuel Delany, STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND; Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, and Halley Wegryn Gross, WESTWORLD; Sun Ra, SPACE IS THE PLACE; Bina48; Wangechi Mutu; Ellen

Select secondary sources: Joni Adamson et al., eds., KEYWORDS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Alexander Weheliye, HABEAS VISCUS: RACIALIZING ASSEMBLAGES, BIOPOLITICS, AND BLACK FEMINIST THEORIES OF THE HUMAN Alexis Pauline Gumbs, M ARCHIVE: AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD Anna Tsing et al., eds., ARTS OF LIVING ON A DAMAGED PLANET

HIST 291/FGSS 269
Professor Aimee Loiselle
TR 1:20-2:50
PAC 422

This seminar will introduce students to histories of gender and sexuality in the context of women’s paid work, the U.S., and global capitalism since 1900. In this perspective, “U.S.” does not denote only the geographic, bordered United States, but also a political, economic, and cultural hub for currents of transnational capital and labor. While women have always worked, ideas about “woman’s work” shift across race, class, region, and time. Feminist historians have examined the dynamics between gender, work, and labor activism, and the ways that women earning wages in turn change notions of gender, sexuality, and the body. Yet recent histories of capitalism too often ignore women’s history, gender analysis, and sexualities. 

We will discuss influential theories in the field of gender and sexuality studies and how they apply to the writing of such history. All students interested in gender as a category of historical analysis for their scholarly work in any field, as well as prospective history and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies majors, will benefit from this course.

Important questions push beyond a simplistic gender binary division of work, labor, or class to ask: how do gender, race, and class impact sex work; how do notions of femininity obscure the significant role of women workers in U.S. imperialism; what happens to ideas of gender, sexuality, and race when women join currents of migrating workers; what are perceptions of the “right work” for women’s bodies and how do these change across other categories like race, class, and size; what has the “feminization” of paid work with the rise of service industries meant for men and masculinity in different regions? This course seeks to reinforce recent scholarly attention to the connections between workers, labor, and economic and social structures through the study of women, gender, and sexuality.

AMST 219
Professor Kasey Jernigan
TR 10:20-11:40
FISK 305

From Pocahontas to Chief Wahoo, Native Americans have been portrayed as noble savages, brave warriors, spiritual shamans, and Indian princesses, greatly shaping the collective imaginings of Native peoples. This class offers an introduction to the broad field of Native American studies with a focus on the themes of identity and (mis)representation. We will draw on work in anthropology, history, literature, art, film, politics, and current events to explore the complex relationship between historical and contemporary issues that indigenous peoples face in North America, with a focus on the United States. Keeping in mind popular culture and historical narrative, we will examine the foundations of Native (mis)representations, their constructions in-step with colonization, and their connections to critical issues facing Native communities, including legal and cultural identities, cultural revitalization, environmental racism, health inequities, gender and sexuality, and sovereignty. This class also pays special attention to resiliency in Native communities and the creative ways that Native peoples and communities engage with social media, art, design, film, activism, and more, to reclaim and reshape Native representations and Native imaginings.

LAST 344/AFAM344
Professor Andrew Walker
MW 8:20-9:40
CAMS 1&2

In 1791, enslaved people rose up against their masters in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, at the time the most profitable plantation society in the world. Thirteen years later, their efforts would culminate in the declaration of independence of Haiti, a nation founded on the pillars of antislavery, anticolonialism, and racial equality. This course investigates the regional and global significance of this revolution through its interconnections with Haiti’s neighbors in the Caribbean and across Latin America. First, we will look at the immediate implications of Haiti’s founding for the fate of New World slavery during the Age of Revolutions. Next, we will consider Haiti’s long-term impact on national identities, racial formations, and future revolutionary struggles in the Americas over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Wednesday 1:20-3:20PM at World Music Hall
Wednesday  3:30—4:30PM sectional rehearsal with TA at WMH  

First class meeting & audition on September 5, class ends on December 1

Course Description:

This course, directed by Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Jin Hi Kim, is an experiential, hands-on percussion ensemble with the predominant instrument in Korean music, the two-headed janggo drum. Students will learn to play a range of percussion instruments including janggo, barrel drum (buk), hand gong (kwenggari), and suspending gong (jing). Through the janggo drumming students gain first hand experience with the role music plays in meditation and the benefits it offers to develop a calm, focused group experience. In the end they integrate their focused mind, physical body energy and breathing through a stream of repetitive rhythmic cycles.

They will be introduced to traditional folk and court styles as well as creative collaborations with a dancer(s) or musicians from other cultures, if there is an opportunity comes in during the semester. The ensemble plays pieces derived from tradition and new ideas and creates new work exploring imaginative sounds on those instruments. The ensemble will experience a deep respect for the diverse cultural backgrounds of the students developed from the efforts of teamwork and creating music together through Korean drumming. The semester will end with a live performance for the public.

For more information, please contact jkim14@wesleyan.edu.