ARTS 1000. The Arts Workshop: I'm So Alone-Art of Surveilled Bodies Amidst a Global Epidemiological Cluster#@%$.

Since COVID-19, enforcement of “social distancing” has become a state mandate. The resultant choreographies of “social distancing” have catalyzed a confluence of gestures, disciplining technologies, discriminatory health practices, and state power; a braid of urgent concern for scholars and artists, and the subject of this interdisciplinary arts workshop. Offered by Brown Arts Initiative, the workshop is open to graduate students, undergraduate students, and faculty by application. Full course credit is available for those interested. Participants will consider their respective creative practices in light of COVID-19 and emerging systems of computational recognition, broader trends with technologies of the body, and surveillance.

ARTS 1001. Arts Writing: New Forms of Cultural Critique.

In this course we will develop our critical skills and find our unique voice for multimedia arts criticism and storytelling rooted in a collective pursuit of liberation. We will study both contemporary arts journalism and cultural theory to assess the urgent needs and issues in the arts and society at large, and address them accordingly. We will be doing a good deal of reading, watching, listening, interviewing, writing, recording, and collaborating. This is where all your skills come in: photography, graphic design, web building, podcasting, playlisting, filming, interviewing, and of course writing. We will create a multimedia project documenting our work, and that of the artists we engage with. Through this process we will reimagine an inclusive, radical practice in culture, one that bridges the classroom and the world.

ARTS 1002. Arts Writing Workshop.

In this course, we will make space for constructive, community-led conversations about art -- and responses through thoughtful writing. How do we map out the conditions of art making? Who gets to impact culture, how, and why? How do we craft responses to art that move culture forward? And how does this writing benefit our lives, and communities? We will hone our cultural criticism skills in a series of workshops that will result in the making of a multimedia zine. This safe, collaborative space will help us reimagine the ways in which art connects us to those around us - and ignite new dynamics of care. This class is open to community members, for whom readings are not mandatory, and who can participate in producing the zine in any capacity.

ARTS 1003. Arts Leadership.

Arts Leadership is an undergraduate course introducing students to the building blocks of effective arts leadership, management, and succession planning with a focus on building practical skills while reflecting on the future of arts leadership. This course is intended for students currently acting in a leadership role for a student arts organization and encourages students to use upcoming group events and programs as the basis for assignments and final projects. Students planning to step into leadership roles may participate in the course with a current leader to develop organizational structure and succession plans.

ARTS 1004. Race and the Making of Art.

In this course, we will begin by examining how race is constructed, systematized, codified, commodified, and disseminated across various spaces in society through the study of several key scholarly and theoretical works. We will then use that lens to explore how different artists from multiple disciplines (poetry, visual art, music, and performance) have engaged issues of race in their work to both affirm individual and collective racial identities and trouble the ways those identities have been represented and understood. Each student will create creative or critical works reflecting their own intersections with these topics.

ARTS 1005. New Forms of Theatre: Traditional Storytelling to Storyweaving.

This course examines Native American theatre from origins of traditional storytelling to politics of race involved in Native theatre today and is best suited for students exploring how to become theatre makers. First, we examine traditional storytelling from creation stories in literature and theatre. Second, we study interactions with Europeans with the Doctrine of Discovery, Native American boarding schools systems, outlawing of traditional culture and how Native culture survived in these systems in wild west shows, sideshows and snake oil shows. Topics will be explored through a Native lens via movies, commercials, television and will examine the theatre movement that responded. Finally, students will directly engage with course content through weekly embodied practice. The weekly course structure will include one class meeting focused on seminar/lecture/discussion, with the second meeting focused on writing and movement based in Spiderwoman methodology.

ARTS 1006. Playing The Villain On Camera.

This class will explore playing the villain on camera. We will focus on three archetypes of the villain as outlined in USC Professor Joe Hacker’s seminal work “Auditioning for the Camera”: 1. The psychopathic individual. 2. Those driven by an inclination to create chaos, and 3.Those who get caught up in an illicit scheme to get something (money, power, revenge, love). Each of these archetypes will be explored in class, then filmed, and will be delivered to each student. Your professor is a working professional film, television, and theater actor, and students will additionally explore the “first day of shooting” using these villain pieces: you will be guided through the process of filming these pieces in a professional setting.

ARTS 1007. Performance Practice Workshop.

Looking at performance as an act of transmission rather than a transaction or production, this class will consider the differing ways we relate to other bodies moving through space. Students will be guided through the process by which Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born create performance work. Utilizing writing exercises, song making practices, and structured/improvisational movement as research tools into what our bodies may carry from ancestors we no longer locate on a map or in a history book. Reading the writings of other practitioners whose work expresses foundational tenets of Okwui and Peter’s practice will be discussed alongside active movement exercises. With a focus on collaboration and engagement, we will investigate how performance can be a way of practicing new relations to one another. The course will culminate with students creating and performing their own projects with class participation.

ARTS 1008. Heart as Vector: Thinking Across the Arts with Shahzia Sikander.

This course thinks across the arts with the remarkable artist Shahzia Sikander. Over three decades, Sikander has produced compelling objects that practically and theoretically transcend borders and probe contested histories. Sikander is internationally renowned for a pioneering, multi-media practice that takes classical Indo-Persian miniature painting as its point of departure, and inflects it with contemporary South Asian, American, Feminist, and Muslim perspectives. Sikander’s work stands in opposition to the idea of homogenous and authentic national cultures; instead, Sikander asks that we understand terms such as “tradition,” “culture” and “identity” as unstable, abstract, and constantly evolving. This course considers different aspects of Sikander’s practice, from her training in Indo-Persian painting to her work with poets, dancers, and composers. We’ll engage closely with South Asian paintings, and a range of texts, including works by Aruna D’Souza, Gayatri Gopinath, and Saidiya Hartman.

ARTS 1009. Black Music Performance.

The history of black music is a rich and diverse tapestry, spanning centuries and continents.
In this course, students will explore the history of black music through a variety of lenses, including its social and cultural context, its technical and stylistic innovations, and its impact on contemporary music. Students will also have the opportunity to develop their ensemble instrumental skills through workshops and performance opportunities.

ARTS 1010. Script to Screen (LITR 1110U).

Interested students must register for LITR 1110U.

ARTS 1010E. Advanced Screenwriting (LITR 1010E)..

Interested students must register for LITR 1010E.

ARTS 1011. Acting for the Camera.

“Acting for the Camera” curriculum is divided into three parts depending on experience: 1. Auditioning for the Camera, 2. Acting for the Camera, 3. Playing the Villain on Camera. Part 2, “Acting,” will be our focus: Multiple scripts, including episodes of “Homeland,” “Mad Men,” and “Ted Lasso” will be part of the curriculum in addition to scripts from the following genres: comedies, drama, single and multi-camera TV (sitcoms), superhero franchises, horror, etc. This work should complement and enhance previous acting studies and help you move to an understanding of the nuanced shift actors need to make when they are acting for the camera. Kate Burton teaches ARTS 1006, "Playing the Villain on Camera," and TAPS 1500R, "Auditioning for the Camera." These courses (and any camera courses taught by Richard Waterhouse in TAPS) provide a foundation for studying camera acting.

ARTS 1012. Body as Medium: Queer Lineages of Duration, Resonance, and Excess.

Body as Medium: Queer Lineages of Duration, Resonance, and Excess will experiment with form: the university “seminar” and durational performance. This class, jointly offered by the departments of Modern Culture and Media (MCM) and Theatre Arts and Performance Studies (TAPS), will be led by Fall 2024 BAI Associate Professor of Practice Julie Tolentino, whose artistic practice extends across performance-installation, movement, sculpture, video, and sound. Over several decades, Tolentino created an archive of interdisciplinary artworks rooted in the rich lineages of AIDS activism, underground nightlife, and queer rituals of mourning and caregiving. We will visit Tolentino’s archive as a generative resource for thinking with past and future methodologies, lifeworlds, and (im)material concerns to investigate multi-generational artists’ practices. Participants agree to develop, experiment, and perform in public as a form of study and discovery. No previous performance experience is necessary.

ARTS 1013A. Producing Your First Documentary Film In Theory And Practice.

This course is designed to teach students how to produce a long-form (more than 42-minutes’ duration) documentary film suitable for television broadcast or distribution via internet channels and/or streaming services. The documentary (working title UNTITLED BROWN TITLE IX SPORTS DOCUMENTARY) is designed to celebrate Brown’s female athletes across the university’s history, emphasizing female intercollegiate athletes of the past half-century, chronicling stories of their courage, resilience and excellence while illuminating the very essence and uniqueness of the Brown experience. This groundbreaking course is made possible by the generous support of Brown Athletics, led by the Chancellor Samuel M. Mencoff ’78 Vice President for Athletics and Recreation, M. Grace Calhoun ’92, Ph.D, The film ready for audiences to screen at events commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ivy League Women Sports at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.

ARTS 1013B. Finalizing Your First Documentary Feature: Content Creation from Script to Screen.

This course is designed to teach students how to post-produce and finally complete a long-form (more than 42-minutes’ duration) documentary film suitable for television broadcast or distribution via internet channels and/or streaming services. The documentary (working title UNTITLED BROWN TITLE IX SPORTS DOCUMENTARY), produced and directed by Brown undergraduates during the 2024 Spring and Fall semesters, was commissioned in 2023 to celebrate Brown’s female athletes across the university’s history, emphasizing female intercollegiate athletes of the past half-century. This unprecedented course, made possible by the generous support of Brown Athletics, led by the Chancellor Samuel M. Mencoff ’78 Vice President for Athletics and Recreation, M. Grace Calhoun ’92, Ph.D, will premiere at events commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ivy League Women Sports at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.

ARTS 1014. Race, Performance, Media.

This course explores the way ideas of race, gender, and sexuality, as intertwined concepts, are produced and performed, and how they are enacted through live performance, film, video, recording and various internet incarnations. We consider live performance, but also the circulation of images, ideas, memes and iconographica in historical perspective, from early film and documentary to online content. We consider these media not only as formations through which dominant cultures reinforce oppressive systems and structures of feeling, but also as formations through which racialized and gendered subjects contest these ideas.

ARTS 1020. Ecopoetics in Practice (LITR 1150A).

Interested students must register for LITR 1150A.

ARTS 1030. The Essentials of Arts Journalism.

The summer is the perfect time to explore the rich cultural offerings of Providence and the wider region – from the RISD Museum to DIY spaces, MIT’s Poetic Justice Project and the many festivals in Massachusetts. This course is an opportunity to approach this artistic scene with the eye and mind of a critic, interviewing musicians, architects, writers and makers, writing reviews and profiles, and recording short audio and video stories. This practice will help you excel in your work as a student and professional in the arts, the media and entertainment. And it’ll be a fun way to know your city and area better, meet new people and bond with fellow students.

ARTS 1100. Anti-Social Reproduction: Art, Activism and the Question of Reproductive Labor (MCM 1701S).

Interested students must register for MCM 1701S.

ARTS 1110. Making Of: Beyond the Fourth Wall, Behind the Scenes, and Inside the Rabbit Hole of Filmmaking.

This class will examine the many ways that movies come together as well as the myriad ways in which they can be pulled apart and put back together by different audiences. Movie-making requires desire, collaboration, improvisation, money, time, and imagination. Sometimes, all it requires is “being there” and a cell phone. Much of what filmmaking demands is hidden in what is seen on screen, but the more we understand about the languages of cinema, the more it's possible to see. Using cinematic history, personal history, and political history as lenses, the class will think together in expansive ways about ethics, process, notions of self, and terms. The class will watch and discuss the films of makers from around the world and across time.

ARTS 1110V. Script to Screen: Scene Work (LITR 1110V)..

Interested students must register for LITR 1110V.

ARTS 1200. Reality Remix - Experimental VR.

This course pursues collaborative experimentation with virtual and augmented reality (AR and VR). The class will work as a team to pursue research (survey of VR/AR experiences, scientific and critical literature review), reconnaissance (identifying VR/AR resources on campus, in Providence and the region), design (VR/AR prototyping). Research findings are documented in a class wiki. The course makes use of Brown Arts Initiative facilities in the Granoff Center where an existing VR laboratory will be expanded through the course of the semester based on student needs. Class culminates in the release the class wiki as a resource for the Brown community.

ARTS 1205. Black Queer Diasporas (MCM 1205F).

Interested students must register for MCM 1205F.

ARTS 1210. Mapping Music in Providence (MUSC 0202U).

Interested students must register for MUSC 0202U.

ARTS 1240. Intro to Rap Songwriting (MUSC 1240R).

Interested students must register for MUSC 1240R.

ARTS 1300. Perception/The Performativity of Neurology (TAPS 1280D).

Interested students must register for TAPS 1280D.

ARTS 1310. Making the 21st Century Musical (TAPS 1251A).

Interested students must register for TAPS 1251A.

ARTS 1330. Way Too Much And Not Nearly Enough: Making Performance in The Post-Post-Dramatic (TAPS 1330A).

Interested students must register for TAPS 1330A.

ARTS 1340. Native American Theatre: from Traditional Storytelling to the Modern Theater Movement (TAPS 1340A).

Interested students must register for TAPS 1340A.

ARTS 1400. Radical Outsiders:Performance Arts Acts of Activism,Communion,Rebellion,Humor,Meditation(VISA 1400).

Interested students must register for VISA 1400.

ARTS 1401. Social Practice: Art in Everyday Life (VISA 1600)..

Interested students must register for VISA 1600.

ARTS 1500R. Auditioning for the Camera (TAPS 1500R)..

Interested students must register for TAPS 1500R.

ARTS 1700. Introduction to iPhone/iPad Moviemaking Using 3-D and 360 VR Comparisons (HMAN 1971S).

Interested students must register for HMAN 1971S.

ARTS 1800. ArtsCrew & The Future of Arts Work.

Introduce students to the principles, techniques, and skills essential to becoming an effective member of the professional arts workforce and to ArtsCrew, an innovative employment service in development here at Brown which will offer access to workforce development opportunities and paid on-campus and community-based project work in a variety of artistic disciplines. Students will be engaged in researching cultural worker employment models, as well as shaping, regularly assessing, and improving the student component of ArtsCrew. In addition to class time, each student will be assigned to an appropriate artistic project on campus across the course of the semester. A total of 180 logged hours, including class time, research assignments, and project work, will be required to pass the class and to enter ArtsCrew as a member eligible for paid work.

ARTS 1910. Artist@Work: William Brittelle.

Students who engage with the arts through Artist@Work courses learn through direct encounter the many and varied research and development processes artists use to advance their thinking, enactment, and refinement of in-progress works. As the students accompany the artist moving toward the goal of professional presentation, exhibition, and performance, they enjoy experiencing the real-world considerations, complexities, technicalities, and activities inherent in making large-scale and professionally-produced art works. Through this exposure, and their direct apprenticeship with working artists, students receive the opportunity for lifelong connection and real-world experience.

ARTS 1910A. Artist@Work: Carrie Mae Weems.

Students who engage with the arts through Artist@Work courses learn through direct encounter the many and varied research and development processes artists use to advance their thinking, enactment, and refinement of in-progress works. As the students accompany the artist moving toward the goal of professional presentation, exhibition, and performance, they enjoy experiencing the real-world considerations, complexities, technicalities, and activities inherent in making large-scale and professionally-produced art works. Through this exposure, and their direct apprenticeship with working artists, students receive the opportunity for lifelong connection and real-world experience.

ARTS 1910B. Artist@Work: Arts Education.

Students in Artist@Work: Arts Education will work closely with teaching artists Cassidy Jones and Drew Petersen to develop arts curriculum for Carrie Mae Weems: Varying Shades of Brown, a campus-wide artistic intervention including exhibitions, performances, and a gathering during the Fall 2023 semester. Students will garner insights on the processes and practices of being a teaching artist while gaining first hand experience contributing to the development of Brown Arts Institute’s public programs. This course is best suited for students interested in education, arts curriculum, public programming and/or considering a career as a Teaching Artist.

ARTS 1910D. Artist@Work: Arts Education, Spoken Word.

During Fall 2024, Brown Arts Institute is collaborating with Caridad De la Luz, aka La Bruja, to host a series of spoken word and slam poetry events at Brown uplifting spoken word performance culture in Providence and celebrating 50 years of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. In relation to the planned programming, students in Artist@Work: Arts Education will work closely with Providence-based teaching artists to design and implement workshops for high school students building towards spoken word/slam poetry performances that may be presented at Brown in November. This class is best suited for students interested in arts education, arts curriculum, and mentoring. Prior experience with slam poetry is not required. Note: participating high school students may be multi-language speakers. College students comfortable in multiple languages are encouraged to participate, particularly students with conversational Spanish and Portuguese.

ARTS 1910E. Artist@Work: Building the Artistic Innovators Collective.

This artistic process course introduces students to the work, activities, and creative activity of Brown Arts Institute’s Artistic Innovators Collective (AIC), a fluid group of around forty artists from across the globe who regularly engage with Brown in a variety of ways: to push the boundaries of discipline, to teach, to work, to experiment, to safely fail and take risks, to undertake rigorous and long-term exchange with our campus and surrounding communities. For this course, BAI Artistic Director Avery Willis Hoffman invites Visiting Professor of the Practice Emil J. Kang (Mellon Foundation) to help shape and structure the AIC, in conversation and collaboration with the artists themselves. Students in this course will directly engage with AIC artists to discover their specific professional and artistic needs, track projects in progress and future dreaming, and begin to build programmatic structures.

ARTS 1910F. ARTS 1910F Artist@Work: Arts Education, Spoken Word.

During Fall 2024, Brown Arts Institute is hosting a series of spoken word and slam poetry events at Brown uplifting spoken word performance culture in Providence and beyond. In relation to the planned programming, students in Artist@Work: Arts Education will work closely with Providence-based teaching artists to design and implement workshops for high school students building towards spoken word/slam poetry performances that may be presented at Brown in November. This class is best suited for students interested in arts education, arts curriculum, and mentoring. Prior experience with slam poetry is not required. Note: participating high school students may be multi-language speakers. College students comfortable in multiple languages are encouraged to participate, particularly students with conversational Spanish and Portuguese.

ARTS 1910G. Artist@Work: Prisoner of Love (Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme).

For this Artist@Work course, students will learn from and work closely alongside renowned sound, video, and installation artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme to develop their first major multimedia sound and video installation since 2022, tentatively titled Prisoner of Love. This project aims to celebrate the poetry, music, and art produced within global systems of incarceration in the present and historically. Students will collectively and individually support the artists’ research in a variety of ways: for example, by conducting research at the Hay Library’s Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States archive; co-producing interview questions for subjects; and considering the unique challenges of staging a site-specific installation. The class outcomes far outlive one semester, as Prisoner of Love will debut as a visual art exhibition and performance program at The Bell in spring 2026.

ARTS 1970. Brown Arts Institute Independent Study.

ARTS Independent study offerings create opportunities for students throughout the University to work with Brown Arts Institute faculty to develop courses designed to explore art-related topics of interest with a tailored and focused approach. Once the department and BAI faculty advisor approve, students may register for an independent study or research project. Any student wishing to pursue an independent study or research project must submit a proposal by the first day of the shopping period for the semester in which the proposed project will be conducted. Submit your proposal via this form for official registration approval: https://forms.gle/x7xeiwWdg2f7zBWSA

ARTS 2000. Frequencies of Black Life.

As part of an inter-institutional collaboration with the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics at the Lewis Center for the Arts (LCA) and the Brown Arts Initiative, the proposed graduate seminar will be team-taught by Tina Campt (Art and Archeology/LCA) and Alexander Weheliye (Modern Culture and Media/BAI). The course engages the idea of frequency as a conceptual framework in a range of fields including sound and media studies, Black studies and critical theory, studies of the Anthropocene and social ecology, art history and criticism, and among contemporary artists working in multiple media. Joint in-person sessions of the seminar will be structured around conversations with guest artists and scholars who will present their work at public events and seminar meetings at the host institution.

ARTS 2001. Intertextuality, Interconnectivity: A Performative Sonnet Approach.

In this course, we’ll consider how language, poetics, text, identity and performance generate new perspectives of understanding and creating art. We will consider connections and divergences through a sample of innovative approaches to art making, concepts and experiences. We will utilize both poetry and performance theory, especially Speech Act Theory, to frame ideas of Intertextuality and Interconnectivity in the arts.

ARTS 2004. Theorizing Blackness.

Advanced introduction to critical theories of race and racialization. Investigation of blackness as a category of critical analysis for analyzing Afro-diasporic formations. Consideration of how blackness is shaped by gender, class, sexuality, and nationality.

ARTS 2090E. Black Feminist Sonic Praxes (ARTS 2090E)..

Interested students must register for MUSC 2090E.

ARTS 2221. Accessioning, Archiving, and Antiracism: Critical and Creative Approaches (AMST 2221A).

Interested students must register for AMST 2221A.

ARTS XLIST. Courses of Interest supported by the Brown Arts Institute.