Every semester the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences offers a variety of Special Topics courses in each discipline and at most levels. These courses allow us to add variety to the curriculum, take advantage of the special expertise of sessional instructors or new faculty, and try out course topics before adding them to the regular curriculum. All of these courses are the equal of regularly listed courses and fulfill the discipline and level requirements for graduation.
HUMN 3B91 Sound Objects: Investigating Experimental Music – David Cecchetto
This course examines "experimental" music traditions as they have unfolded since 1945. Attention will be given to a wide range of practices, including conceptual works, serialism, spectral music, locative works, digital practices and sound installation. Looking at this history of “Western art music," the course hinges on a particular tension: on one hand, we will learn about key musical concepts (such as pitch logic, sound colour, texture, and performance ritual) as they have been developed in contemporary music practices; on the other hand, we will examine ways in which other disciplines and ways of thinking have troubled these ideas. The work of artists and musicians, such as John Cage, Schoenberg, Schafer, Cardiff and Bryne will be explored in the course. In short, students will complete this course having developed a robust musical vocabulary, finely tuned ears...and a deep ambivalence about the claims that music makes about itself! No prior experience with music is necessary.
VISA 3B90 Art in Revolution: European Art 1750-1850 – Ryan Whyte
This course examines European art from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century. It explores the role of art in the development of modern politics and political discourse in a period of revolution, nationalism, imperialism and propaganda. Against the backdrop of political, scientific, industrial and social revolutions, the course addresses the changing role of the artist, art academies, exhibitions and the art market, the rise of art criticism and modern aesthetics in the work of artists such as Fuseli, Wright of Derby, West, Goya, Greuze, David, Friedrich, Géricault, Delacroix, Daumier, Courbet and many others.
VISA 4B90 Memory and Monuments – Claudette Lauzon
This course will examine monuments and memorials as expressions of collective memory, trauma, and identity. Some of the questions to be addressed will include: How are memories constructed? What are the politics of memorialization? Who decides which events should be commemorated, and how? How do memorials bear witness to history? In addition to addressing relevant theoretical concepts, we will study specific examples from diverse contexts, including the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, Holocaust monuments in Germany and Eastern Europe, memorials to genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda, the World Trade Center Memorial in New York City, and the memorializing of violence against women in Canada and Mexico. Required reading will include texts by theorists (James E. Young, Marita Sturken, Erika Doss, Sharon Rosenberg, etc) and makers (Jochen Gerz, Daniel Liebeskind, Maya Lin, etc) of memorials and monuments.
VISM 4B94 New Waves in Turkish Cinema – Selmin Kara
The course provides an overview of the stylistic and critical approaches that have emerged in the wake of the post-1990s revival of Turkish cinema. After a period of recession, the Turkish film industry has been revitalized by two simultaneous developments: the birth of a new wave art house cinema, hailed by scholars and international festival circuits as the “New Turkish Cinema,” and the box-office success of recent commercial films. Focusing on this double traffic as well as the concomitant waves of ethnic, transnational, and immigrant Turkish cinemas, the course maps the transformations in the country through the prism of film. (Revised September 2011)
HUMN 3B92 Extraordinary Bodies – Kenny Fries
This seminar course looks at how "physically different" bodies have been viewed artistically throughout history and in our contemporary culture. We will look at how different models of looking at "otherness" have pervaded our culture and how a newer, social model has finally taken root, as well as how these models affect not only our creative lives but also our social, political and personal lives, as well as the environments in which we live. By exploring different bodies as cultural representations we will be challenged to find ways in which the experience of those deemed "different" can be included in contemporary art, literature, and film.
VISA 4B91 The Print Culture of 18th Century Europe – Ryan Whyte
This seminar addresses etching, engraving and associated techniques in 18th-century Europe. In the last great age of printmaking before the emergence of lithography and photography, prints acted as agent of change at all levels of society. The seminar explores satires and caricatures, fashion prints, trade cards, maps, almanacs, encyclopedias, letterhead, printed buttons, games, paper dolls, etc. Relevant issues include the role of prints in: pedagogy and socialization; the visualization of social orders and classes; the shaping of the public sphere; the imaging of the nation, the city, and the country; the relationship between art and commerce.
Last Modified:1/24/2012 12:57:31 PM