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Mystics––historically portrayed as passionate, dangerous, romantic, heretical, satanic––are a thorn in the side of organized religion. From the very beginnings of recorded human time, the presence and practice of mystics has been controversial. Sufi mystic al-Hallaj’s pronouncement that he was “the Truth” was received as blasphemy by the orthodoxy. His execution followed shortly after. Christian mystics of the 4th and 5th centuries were relegated to practicing outside the peripheries of the Roman Empire, in relative secrecy.

This course will explore the construction and experience of gender and sexuality in the Middle East through a performative lens. Drawing on research in ethnomusicology, queer and gender studies, anthropology and Middle Eastern history, the course will examine performance (music, dance, theater, poetry and more) as a process of representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of sexuality and gender identities. This course will delve into the ways that performance, gender, and sexuality relate to ethnicity, nationalism, modernity, colonialism, and religion.

In this course, we will be uncovering, re-positioning, and affirming historical legacies and traditions that stand the risk of being lost forever, and explore how to use them to fight discrimination, racism and hate today.

Intermediate Video builds on the concepts and technical skills introduced in Intro to Video, and has a different theme each term. This semester of Intermediate Video will be focused on the following thematic, conceptual and formal questions.

Since its inception, film has been used for propaganda - disseminating information with a particular slant, whether subtle or obvious - by regimes and independent players across the political spectrum. As the means of production and circuits of distribution become ever more accessible to individuals, we have moved from an era of focused agitprop into a new era of diffused disinformation.

Against a background of what is often described as a worldwide democratic recession or regression, this advanced seminar surveys current theoretical debates, empirical analyses, and policy conversations on the emergence, survival, challenges, breakdowns, and prospects of global democratization.

An introduction to 16mm film techniques, students will shoot and edit analog 16mm film, develop by hand and finally will transfer film to video. Through screenings, experiments and hands-on workshops students will learn about cinematography and the photochemical process. Taking advantage of the special tactile, tangible nature of analog film, material properties will also be explored- direct tactile methods such as loops, paint/scratch on film and laser etching.

This semester-length, 2-credit course, intended for students who will continue to the Advanced Projects in Film/Video II course in spring 2023, supports advanced students in planning, pre-production, and early production (or for 8th term students, post-production and finishing) for more complex, larger-scale, longer-duration, self-directed film/video projects. It also includes a screening series where we watch and analyze feature and mid-length films.

This production course is designed to get students producing video immediately: we will look at basic techniques with an emphasis on simple and self-devised methods of media production, efficient approaches to lighting and sound, and emphasize quick turnover time to create a great amount of work in a relatively short period of time.

This production course introduces students to the fundamentals of working in video and the language of film form. Drawing on the energy, intensity and criticality of avant-garde film and contemporary video art practices, students will complete a series of projects exploring all basic aspects of film/video production (centered on DSLR cameras), such as cinematography, mise-en-scène, editing and sound design.

Today it is clear that the environment matters. In activism and scholarship and public policy, the environment has become a potent (if sometimes obligatory) point of reference. Less attention, however, has focused on the emergence of the environment itself as a converging field of action for advocacy, science, and statecraft. In this seminar, we will reflect not only on what we know of the environment but also on how we came to know the environment.

“I, at least, am not a Marxist”&�Բ�����;Karl Marx