Below a certain depth in the ocean, a human body cannot remain. Not without imploding like a dying star. And yet oceans, bodies of water—such as the Atlantic—contain countless vital remains. Despite humanity’s vast technological advancements, the sciences continue to grapple with the ocean’s unreachable depths. On another disciplinary shore, critical ocean studies scholar, Steve Mentz, invites students of literature to “read for the salt.” While we may never experience an unmediated encounter with the chasmic depths of the Mariana Trench, the literary arts are saturated in blue matters. “Dark Waters” approaches modern anglophone literatures of the Atlantic—from England to Jamaica, from the U.S. to Nigeria—as a transnational, transhistorical archive whose oceanic histories are polluted equally by the chattel slavery of the middle passage and the oil spills of fossil fuel industries. Wading into the poetry of M. NourbeSe Phillip or Shailja Patel, the novels of Helon Habila, George Lamming, or John Lanchester, or the stories of Saleen Haddad, Virginia Woolf, or Mulk Raj Anand, this course invites students to create inlets and pursue tidal flows between the creative and the critical, and also amongst the entangled scientific and cultural materialities of our hydro-modernity. Sampling the critical-philosophic offerings of others—such as Alexis Pauline Gumbs' “undrowned,” Stacy Alaimo’s “transcorporiality,” Christina Sharpe’s “being in the wake,” and Elizabeth Deloughery’s “Heavy Waters”—students will use writing and other expressive media across two core projects and associated preparatory work to explore and, finally, offer their own ideas on the texts we have plumbed together.

Elective

A study of the works and influence of J.R.R. Tolkien at the intersection of Postcolonial studies, Classics, and Byzantine and Medieval Studies. Particular attention is paid to themes including: the influence of 19th-century scholarship and its fixation on ideologies of the Volk and the genealogies and wanderings of nations; legacies of empire and colonialism; discourses of Orientalism and antisemitism; medieval nostalgias from the Victorian to the Second Elizabethan Era; the Claims of Philology; source criticism and Tolkien's literary/historical influences; distortions and elisions of Byzantium and other cultures in the discursive construction of Western Civilization; and contemporary concerns including racist backlash to the casting of people of color in recent adaptations.

Elective

 This course will examine cinema as a culture text to be read for its various meanings: formalist through socio-ideological. As such, it will also introduce students to the basics of formalist film analysis, from editing techniques to sound production. We will focus on perhaps the best cultural and cinematic movement for critical inquiry: Surrealist cinema. While cinema was only one of many arts utilized by the 20th century surrealists (in Paris and elsewhere), it was clearly the most fetishized and experimented with of all the various enactments of the movement, becoming the ultimate surrealist “dream” experience as Andre Breton and others commented throughout the movement’s main decades (1920s and 30s). What fascinated the Parisian surrealists was the “otherness” of the cinematic experience, and they approached film as the perfect medium for producing a communion with otherness (alterity) and for subversion of bourgeois European culture that, in their eyes, had left Europe and the World only violence and colonial dominance. Film became, therefore, the link between not only surrealism’s formal experiments but also its decolonial tendencies. Such postcolonial crossroads also intersect with surrealism’s other fascination with otherness: feminism and the subversion of heteropatriarchy. And hence, surrealist film becomes the perfect mode for the critical study of modernisms both in Europe and in the Global South, and for the study of alternative forms of artistic and cultural vision. This course will center its studies upon these frames for a revision of surrealist film: formal experiment, modernisms and decolonial resistance, and radical reworkings of identity. To do so, we will begin with the ending: Afrosurrealism and “Black” surrealism in the Global South, and then work backwards to Parisian Surrealism (and Dada) and its developments particularly in the films of Jean Cocteau and Luis Bunuel. We’ll end the course with a look back “out” at postcolonial surrealisms (Marvelous Realism and Magical Realism) and avant-garde cinema at the crossroads, from American avant-garde to global.

Elective

Ireland has a long history of literature, stretching from pre-Christian epics through monastic manuscripts right up to the thriving contemporary scene. While there are many important Irish writers before the beginning of the twentieth century, clearly the birth of the Abbey theatre and the poetry of W. B. Yeats and the prose of James Joyce created reverberations still felt in Ireland today. Using Joyce, Synge, and Yeats as a beginning point in this seminar we will look at a series of contemporary Irish writers whose works is building upon the foundation established in the early years of the twentieth century. One of the themes we will return to again and again in this course is the theme of loss - loss of language, loss of sovereignty, loss of loved ones.  What does Stephen mean when he says, "History is a Nightmare from which I am trying to awake"?  Why is Yeats' left in "the foul rag and bone shop of the heart"?

Elective

In The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Frantz Fanon writes, "The relations of man with matter, with the world outside, and with history are in the colonial period simply relations with food." Fanon recognizes that for the colonized subject existence itself is so threatened that every bit of food one can gain access to is, as he writes, "a victory felt as a triumph for life." The foods people choose to eat and the ways they prepare those foods speak volumes about their relationship to the land and reflect their history. Postcolonial storytellers, writers, and filmmakers use food and foodways as markers of independence, as symbols of cultural colonization, and as signs of continued deprivations. Through foodways one can glimpse famines, invasions, and historical access to trade networks, and food itself can even serve as a vehicle for communication. Since these stories are not constructed in a vacuum, they also can reveal something about what food means in specific historical moments, in specific places, and for specific populations. This course will look at the roles food and foodways play in a series of narratives from formerly colonized spaces. Writers we will read may include Chris Abani, Bessie Head, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Elective

The LAS Open Seminar is devoted to the development of undergraduate and graduate degree projects that engage the discipline of literary arts and studies, and involves the writing of a longer, research-based project (thesis, artist's statement, creative work, etc). This engagement may take a variety of different forms, including a direct referencing or interaction with literary texts or issues; a focus on textuality and/or narrativity; a concern with research and the mechanics of writing a longer project. Therefore, as the course title indicates, the seminar has an open structure to accommodate our ability to address and foster each student's interests and concerns. As the semester progresses, we will move from a discussion of texts that introduce key concepts in the framing of interdisciplinary projects to group analyses and the workshopping of each student's project. In the first part of the semester, we will discuss a number of conceptual tenets that will ground our theorization of the artistic process, including issues of intentionality and audience; issues of translation and interdisciplinarity; and the relation of form to content. The second part of the semester will be organized and driven by group analyses of the degree and related written project of each class member.

Elective

The traditional people of Ghana’s Ashanti region had a time-worn tradition of collective sculptural plastering on buildings. This is one of the most unique cultures of relief sculpture with earth in the world, developed over hundreds of years – a creative practice quickened during the intimate community experiences of maternity (pregnancy and child-rearing). Despite their cultural importance, however, pregnancy and child-rearing are serious risk-taking activities, especially in rural villages, due to the lack of maternity health clinics and other basic infrastructures that allow mothers to access health care education and services when necessary. 

What is the experience of maternity in a modernized Ghana? Is it still collective, culturally rich, and creative? Is this not the most creative time in the collective lives of women – as they prepare for childbirth? Has the influence of the Modern International Style – and the systematic replacement of rich local materials and traditions with poor quality imported materials and construction methods negatively impacted the local experience of maternity? What might be the best practice in designing and constructing future maternity health clinics in rural villages while applying vernacular wisdom and tradition with contemporary knowledge?              

Earthen construction and the manipulation of clay have been one of the most direct forms of creative expression in vernacular cultures all around the world. This is especially the case with relief sculpture. Building with the earth also – despite the false stigma propagated by modern Euro-centric development work is one of the healthiest materials in the built environment. Concrete and steel cannot boast the same thermally self-regulating, humidity-modulating, and bio-climatically optimal material for construction. Where earth – and bio-climatic design – result in optimal human comfort and habitation patterns, modern materials often lead to poor health from thermal dysregulation, mold growth, and toxic materials in the home.

Should a modern maternity clinic not be an example of a new “vernacular material modernism”? This Wintersession proto-design studio will grapple with what this means for the women of modern, post-colonial Ghana. Students will work with the village community and local women – both those expressing the need for a modern maternity clinic – and those who still practice the dying art of clay plastering.

Can the deep material intelligence of the earth and of the vernacular building technologies be brought to bear on the modern experience of maternity in Ghana? What is the modern exchange passed from mother to daughter that can suggest a way forward for a participatory, owner-driven conception of the maternity clinic and ward?

The course will draw on expertise in earthen heritage and tangible knowledge from a variety of sources working in this region, including the International Center for Earthen Construction (CRAterre), UNESCO World Heritages Sites Commission (WHEAP), and the World Monuments Fund.

During the trip, students will visit traditional and modern buildings in the coastal and inland areas, conduct soil tests in fields, study and develop a catalog of local building materials and methods, and produce proto-designs for a future maternity health clinic.

This is a co-requisite course. Students must also register for ARCH 1515 - *GHANA: VERNACULAR MATERIAL MODERNISM - DESIGN RESEARCH IN GHANA.

Registration is not available in Workday. All students are required to remain in good academic standing in order to participate in the Wintersession travel course/studio. A minimum GPA of 2.50 is required. Failure to remain in good academic standing can lead to removal from the course, either before or during the course. Also in cases where Wintersession travel courses and studios do not reach student capacity, the course may be cancelled after the last day of Wintersession travel course registration. As such, all students are advised not to purchase flights for participation in Wintersession travel courses until the course is confirmed to run, which happens within the week after the final Wintersession travel course registration period.

Elective

Liminal Landscapes: Gradient of change within your own landscape. What captivates us about a sunset? Most likely, you’ve enjoyed the sunlight distorted by our atmosphere’s gases and how compelling that transition is. The gradient in the sky, the border between day and night, is a liminal threshold we encounter daily. Like vestibules on buildings, beaches between land and water, marginal vegetation between forest and outside, adolescence is a liminal stage between childhood and adulthood. Liminality can be a gradient from a lesser to most change. Liminality in landscape architecture primes us to understand the change of seasons and the effects of climate change. Applications span ecological, social, cultural, and political topics. In this complex contemporary world, we must break from the binary constraints and embrace the nuances for a more empathetic existence.

The studio will examine experiences, recognize thresholds, and the implications of crossing physical or psychological landscapes. We will achieve this with three short exercises, creating artifacts to detect liminality. We will employ technical drawing methods, texture generation, pinball site analysis, and model-making, among other forms of representation. Readings from Anthropologist Victor Turner, Urban Planner Michel Dear, Landscape Architects like Chip Sullivan and James Corner, Architects like Dilip Da Cuna, and American scholar Gloria Anzaldua, among others, will inform our making practice, applied in a site case study. Short lectures, meditation exercises, field trips, and work sessions will compose our class experiences, culminating in a final presentation and conversation to understand the magnitude of our inhabitance within liminal landscapes.

Elective

This course explores design principles central to landscape architecture. Three interrelated aspects of design are pursued:

1) the elements of composition and their formal, spatial, and tectonic manipulation

2) meanings conveyed by formal choices and transformations

3) interactions of cultural and ecological forces in the landscape.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

This course explores design principles central to landscape architecture. Three interrelated aspects of design are pursued:

1) the elements of composition and their formal, spatial, and tectonic manipulation

2) meanings conveyed by formal choices and transformations

3) interactions of cultural and ecological forces in the landscape.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

What do these words mean and what is their relationship to each other in the architectural design disciplines? Each word is packed with complex and evolving meanings that reflect the state of human knowledge about the environments in which we live and in which we intervene. Each word reflects our understanding of systems, physical, cultural and social, biotic and abiotic, as well as our aspirations to conserve, restore, or reshape those systems. Each word is ubiquitous in the contemporary quest to construct a sustainable, resilient future. But do we really understand what they mean? Are they critically interdependent or can they be considered separately? This studio will examine these questions with the twin objectives of establishing an evolving and dynamic understanding of the terms and generating working methods that respond to the complexities of scale encountered in the landscape.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

What do these words mean and what is their relationship to each other in the architectural design disciplines? Each word is packed with complex and evolving meanings that reflect the state of human knowledge about the environments in which we live and in which we intervene. Each word reflects our understanding of systems, physical, cultural and social, biotic and abiotic, as well as our aspirations to conserve, restore, or reshape those systems. Each word is ubiquitous in the contemporary quest to construct a sustainable, resilient future. But do we really understand what they mean? Are they critically interdependent or can they be considered separately? This studio will examine these questions with the twin objectives of establishing an evolving and dynamic understanding of the terms and generating working methods that respond to the complexities of scale encountered in the landscape.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

This core studio stresses middle scale landscape architectural design. A series of studio problems will explore urban public spaces. Students will endeavor to represent contemporary cultural and ecological ideas in land form. There will be an emphasis on constructive strategies, the use of plants in design and methods of representation.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

This final core studio stresses large-scale and planning issues, complex sites, and urban conditions. The city is a living organism which evolves in a particular locale with a particular form due to a combination of environmental and cultural factors. These factors, the forces they represent and the material results of their interaction form, in their interrelated state, what can be called urban systems. The many forces at play within cities-social, cultural, economic, ideological, ecological, infra structural, morphological and visual-combine in various ways to created both an identifiable urban realm and the many sub zones within this. Yet, none of these factors is static and unchanging; and, as a result, urban systems, urban dynamics, and urban identity are likewise in a continuous state of flux. This studio will explore these systems and the complex issues at play in our urban areas and the potential for positive change. Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

As the scope and objectives of the design disciplines expand and diversify, the ability to implement effective research methodologies has become increasingly critical to position designers to generate and validate new knowledge. This course will survey research methods relevant to the design disciplines that have emerged from the sciences, the social sciences and the arts with special focus on those utilized by landscape architects. Methods we will examine include case studies, descriptive strategies, classification schemes, interpretive strategies, evaluation and diagnosis, engaged action research, projective design and arts-based practices. Students will work individually and in teams to analyze and compare different research strategies, understand their procedures and sequences, the types of data required, projected outcomes, and value by examining a set of projects of diverse scales. Visiting lecturers will present research based design projects. The goal of the course is to provide students with a framework of research methodologies with which they can begin to build their own research based practices.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

This course introduces students to the material properties of wood, metal, stone, concrete and soil. Through material experiments, hand drafted material details, 1:1 construction and material case studies, students will gain experience working with the materials to understand the inherent constraints and opportunities of each material. In addition, a series of field trips will help students understand the geographies of material extraction and the processes of assembly and installation.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

This class will explore the botanical, horticultural and ecological aspects of plants and plant communities. Through lectures and field trips, students will become familiar with the form, physical qualities, identifying characteristics, seasonal aspect, preferred growing conditions, native habitats and ecological function of common plants of New England. In addition, lectures will focus on contemporary ecological theories around disturbance ecology and ecological succession to gain an understanding of how designers can work with these forces to shape landscapes over time.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

This course will explore the use of plants as a design medium while balancing the horticultural considerations. There will be analyses of existing gardens, field trips, and the creation of schematic and detailed planting plans for different types of sites. Topics such as seasonality, texture, color and form will be discussed.

Open to Landscape Architecture Students only.

Registration by the Landscape Architecture Design Department; this course is not available via web registration. Please contact the department for permission to register.

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

This seminar addresses advanced problems in landscape construction, materials, and site engineering. In this class, students will be asked to apply their knowledge of landscape technologies and materials gained from earlier classes into an abbreviated technical drawing set. Through the drawing set, students will gain an understanding of the different stages of design including; concept development, schematic design, design development, and construction documentation. This project will become the basis for understanding the how details and materials develop and change throughout the pre-construction process.

Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students only.

Major Requirement | MLA-II Landscape Architecture

This seminar focuses on the ecology, policy and design of freshwater and coastal systems. Through the study of water from the top of the watershed to the coast, this class focuses on the role of designers and allied professionals in the design and management of the dynamic interface between land and water. Through a multi-scalar approach, students will learn about the impacts of urbanization on water quality and coastal ecosystems, current approaches to the restoration of freshwater and coastal ecosystems, storm water management techniques and calculations, and the impact of climate change on water resources.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Preference is given to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture