Fall 2021
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 700, Expressive Culture: Topics—Ancient Africa, Art and Archaeology
Prof. Howley (Institute of Fine Arts) [Syllabus]
Africa is often depicted as a land without history. Nothing could be further from the case. In fact, the traces of human cultural expression—art, architecture, and objects, or what together might be called the built environment—stretch back tens of thousands of years across the whole continent, and demonstrate the important role that artistic production had in ancient African societies. We survey major archaeologically-attested African cultures and critically evaluate the impact that modern histories of Euro-American colonial involvement with Africa have had, and continue to have, on the popular understan ding of the complexity and importance of ancient African cultures. Attention is paid to the work of African scholars, post-colonial approaches that center the needs and interests of local populations, and the challenges archaeologists face as they attempt to reconstruct the ancient African past.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 711, Expressive Culture: The Graphic Novel
Prof. Borenstein (Russian and Slavic Studies) [Syllabus]
Examines the interplay between words and images in the graphic novel, a hybrid medium with a system of communication reminiscent of prose fiction, animation, and film. What is the connection between text and art? How are internal psychology, time, and action conveyed in a static series of words and pictures? What can the graphic novel convey that other media cannot? Authors include Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, Peter Milligan, Charles Burns, Carla Speed McNeil.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 722, Expressive Culture: Architecture in New York Field Study
Prof. Broderick (Art History) [Syllabus]
New York's rich architectural heritage offers a unique opportunity for firsthand consideration of the concepts and styles of modern urban architecture, as well as its social, financial, and cultural contexts. Meets once a week for an extended period combining on-campus lectures with group excursions to prominent buildings. Attention is given both to individual buildings as examples of 19th- and 20th-century architecture and to phenomena such as the development of the skyscraper and the adaptation of older buildings to new uses.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 730, Expressive Culture: Sounds
Prof. Oliver (Music) [Syllabus]
Think about your favorite music, musician, song, and then think about the technologies that make them and your listening possible: microphones, recording studios, CDs, mp3 files, musical instruments, speakers, iPods, etc. Are these technologies essential to this music? Are they circumstantial? Some musical practices seem, at least at first sight, non-technological; others are overtly technological and use screens, speakers, computers, and other gadgets, as central aspects of their music. Focusing on experimental electronic and computer music and a diverse range of popular music produced in the 20th and 21st Century, we ask: What is music? What is sound? What is noise? What is music technology? Is music inherently technological? Is technology expressive?
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 730, Expressive Culture: Sounds
Prof. Teyssier (Music) [Syllabus]
Sound and Science. From the sonification of Covid-19’s amino acid combinations to detecting black holes, contemporary science makes frequent use of sound as a tool to explore the universe. Sound seems to grant both a direct and intuitive access to natural phenomena and to capture the ineffable, temporal boundedness of life itself. These qualities, however, have also been sound’s weakness, whose subjective and elusive nature often put it at odds with science’s standards of objectivity. An ambivalent tool for science, sound is also a challenging object of study because of its tendency to escape established modes of observation. We examine the entwined histories of sound and science by considering both the role of sound in the sciences and the sciences of sound. We consider the multifaceted relation between sound and science both from the perspective of a broad range of academic disciplines, including biology, psychology, phonetics, musicology, and environmental studies; as well as fields of practice, from car repair and speech therapy, to instrument making and the development of telecommunications; and approach a great variety of sonic phenomena, ranging from music and speech, to natural soundscapes and fictional sounds.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 750, Expressive Culture: Film
Prof. Polan (Cinema Studies) [Syllabus]
Howard Hawks was a consummate director of action film. Working in genres such as the western, the war film, the detective story, and the adventure tale, Hawks crafted engaging narratives of men on a mission working together, their endeavor externalized into dramas of physicality, of bodies on the line, and rendered through a clean, tight cinema focused on movement, men’s corporeal craft, and team-work. This body of work is balanced, or perhaps even challenged, by a set of other Hawks films focusing on energetic, adventurous women who subvert masculine supremacy and even show up men as infantile about violence, rough play, and machismo. A musical like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes shows weak men at the mercy of over-the-top powerful women, while a screwball comedy like I Was a Male War Bride centers on a demasculinized man who spends much of the film in drag. We examine these contrasts in Hawks’ films: masculine action versus feminine challenges to male empowerment, stories of action versus critiques of violence as simplistic solution. The content of Hawks’ films is also considered against issues of style and cinematic expression: what resources of crisp story-telling does he employ to convey tales of men in action, and how are these undone in the comedies and musicals? Looking at Hawks’ specific place in the Hollywood studio system, we see him as a case study of how American narrative film functioned thematically and stylistically as popular art.