Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Wed
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Wed
For more than four centuries, opera has made us cry and laugh, and it still speaks to us today about ourselves and our lives. It does so by telling us stories of love and death, of power and despair, through a unique way of combining words, music and stage action, and ever new styles of performance. This course is designed to develop an understanding of the details of such combination and the way they cooperate in making an opera work in general and for us today. It does not develop chronologically, but through exposure to a selection of major works by Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini. The presentations will be organised around individual operas, exploring their historical background, text and music, performing issues, reception history, and adaptation to other media (not necessarily in this sequence). Each opera will also be taken as a vantage point to explore one main thematic issue, while broader issues – such as genre, the development of formal conventions of librettos and music, Italian opera and its terminology, modes of production, cultural expression, social factors that give rise to certain narratives, how opera fits into the larger history of ideas in Western culture – will build up over the course.
College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu
The relationship of the brain to behavior, beginning with the basic elements that make up the nervous system and how electrical and chemical signals in the brain work to effect behavior. Using this foundation, we examine how the brain learns and how it creates new behaviors, together with the brain mechanisms that are involved in sensory experience, movement, hunger and thirst, sexual behaviors, the experience of emotions, perception and cognition, memory and the brain’s plasticity. Other key topics include whether certain behavioral disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be accounted for by changes in the function of the brain, and how drugs can alter behavior and brain function.
College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates:
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue
The course description for this Topics in CORE course varies depending on where the course is taught. Please view the course descriptions in the course notes section below.
College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Wed
This is a chance to immerse yourself in the musical culture of Prague. You will attend five music performances together with the class and two on your own. Each of the concerts will be in a different style, and performed in a different sort of venue. Each concert will be preceded by a lecture/listening session, often involving the actual performers; you will also be assigned a reading excerpt relevant to the music you will hear. The concerts, scheduled about once every two weeks on evenings between Mondays and Thursdays, will be supplemented by architecture walks and film showings, which will usually take place during class time. In addition, you will undertake a “Personal Connection Project”, in groups of two or three, in which you will choose a local genre, performer or composer to research. The research will include reading relevant contextual material, attendance at a live concert or rehearsal, and an interview with a performer. You will share your project with the class in an oral presentation, which will take place at the end of the semester. after which you will submit your conclusions in a final paper, in lieu of a final exam.
College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu,Mon
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu,Mon
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu,Mon,Tue
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu,Mon,Tue
The course description for this CORE class varies on the location where taught. Please view the course description in the course notes below.
College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Thu
Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Thu
Contemporary Art in Britian. Contemporary art raises vigorous debate and criticism. But what is contemporary about contemporary art? We consider some key issues in dealing critically with contemporary art with a focus on work on display in exhibitions in London, both major national collections and private galleries, exploring art produced since the late 1950s through case studies of the work of individual artists and through themes which include photography, representations of the body, gallery display, video practice, and installation art. Topics include how contemporary art came to look as it does, with a focus on British art; the different forms of material and presentation artists have employed; why and how diverse audiences are addressed; and how markets, national prizes, and private collections shape the kinds of art produced and inform public taste. We also look at the collection and display of contemporary art, on a private and a public scale; dealer galleries, and issues of curation. Critical and historical writings by artists and theorists will be considered.
College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks